He looked up from his book; his eyes were not cold or malevolent, his mouth was not cynical; he was ready and willing to hear what I might have to say. His spirit was of vintage too mellow and generous to sour in one thunder-clap.

“Dr. Bretton, forgive my hasty words; do—do forgive them.”

He smiled that moment I spoke. “Perhaps I deserved them, Lucy. If you don’t respect me, I am sure it is because I am not respectable. I fear I am an awkward fool. I must manage badly in some way, for where I wish to please, it seems I don’t please.”

“Of that you cannot be sure; and even if such be the case, is it the fault of your character or of another’s perceptions? But now, let me unsay what I said in anger. In one thing, and in all things, I deeply respect you. If you think scarcely enough of yourself, and too much of others, what is that but an excellence?”

“Can I think too much of Ginevra?”

“I believe you may; you believe you can’t. Let us agree to differ. Let me be pardoned; that is what I ask.”

“Do you think I cherish ill-will for one warm word?”

“I see you do not and cannot; but just say, ‘Lucy, I forgive you!’ Say that, to ease me of the heart-ache.”

“Put away your heart-ache, as I will put away mine—for you wounded me a little, Lucy. Now, when the pain is gone, I more than forgive. I feel grateful, as to a sincere well-wisher.”

“I am your sincere well-wisher; you are right.”

Thus our quarrel ended.

Reader, if, in the course of this work, you find that my opinion of Dr. John undergoes modification, excuse the seeming inconsistency. I give the feeling as at the time I felt it; I describe the view of character as it appeared when discovered.

He showed the fineness of his nature by being kinder to me after that misunderstanding than before. Nay, the very incident which, by my theory, must in some degree estrange me and him, changed, indeed, somewhat our relations, but not in the sense I painfully anticipated. An invisible but a cold something, very slight, very transparent, but very chill—a sort of screen of ice—had hitherto, all through our two lives, glazed the medium through which we exchanged intercourse. Those few warm words, though only warm with anger, breathed on that frail frost-work of reserve; about this time it gave note of dissolution. I think from that day, so long as we continued friends, he never in discourse stood on topics of ceremony with me. He seemed to know that if he would but talk about himself, and about that in which he was most interested, my expectation would always be answered, my wish always satisfied. It follows, as a matter of course, that I continued to hear much of “Ginevra.”

“Ginevra!” He thought her so fair, so good; he spoke so lovingly of her charms, her sweetness, her innocence, that, in spite of my plain prose knowledge of the reality, a kind of reflected glow began to settle on her idea, even for me. Still, reader, I am free to confess that he often talked nonsense; but I strove to be unfailingly patient with him. I had had my lesson. I had learned how severe for me was the pain of crossing, or grieving, or disappointing him. In a strange and new sense, I grew most selfish, and quite powerless to deny myself the delight of indulging his mood and being pliant to his will. He still seemed to me most absurd when he obstinately doubted and desponded about his power to win in the end Miss Fanshawe’s preference. The fancy became rooted in my own mind more stubbornly than ever that she was only coquetting to goad him, and that, at heart, she coveted every one of his words and looks. Sometimes he harassed me, in spite of my resolution to bear and hear; in the midst of the indescribable gall-honey pleasure of thus bearing and hearing, he struck so on the flint of what firmness I owned that it emitted