to the disturbing impressions of former years. So, as
the result of our correspondence, Laura is coming this evening, and I
wish you to be present at our meeting. There is another reason why I
wish you to be here. My little boy is not far from the--age at which I
received my terrifying, almost disorganizing shock. I mean to have
little Maurice brought into the presence of Laura, who is said to be
still a very handsome woman, and see if he betrays any hint of that
peculiar sensitiveness which showed itself in my threatening seizure. It
seemed to me not impossible that he might inherit some tendency of that
nature, and I wanted you to be at hand if any sign of danger should
declare itself. For myself I have no fear. Some radical change has
taken place in my nervous system. I have been born again, as it were, in
my susceptibilities, and am in certain respects a new man. But I must
know how it is with my little Maurice."

Imagine with what interest I looked forward to this experiment; for
experiment it was, and not without its sources of anxiety, as it seemed
to me. The evening wore along; friends and neighbors came in, but no
Laura as yet. At last I heard the sound of wheels, and a carriage
stopped at the door. Two ladies and a gentleman got out, and soon
entered the drawing room.

"My cousin Laura!" whispered Maurice to me, and went forward to meet her.
A very handsome woman, who might well have been in the thirties,--one of
those women so thoroughly constituted that they cannot help being
handsome at every period of life. I watched them both as they approached
each other. Both looked pale at first, but Maurice soon recovered his
usual color, and Laura's natural, rich bloom came back by degrees. Their
emotion at meeting was not to be wondered at, but there was no trace in
it of the paralyzing influence on the great centres of life which had
once acted upon its fated victim like the fabled head which turned the
looker-on into a stone.

"Is the boy still awake?" said Maurice to Paolo, who, as they used to say
of Pushee at the old Anchor Tavern, was everywhere at once on that gay
and busy evening.

"What! Mahser Maurice asleep an' all this racket going on? I hear him
crowing like young cockerel when he fus' smell daylight."

"Tell the nurse to bring him down quietly to the little room that leads
out of the library."

The child was brought down in his night-clothes, wide awake, wondering
apparently at the noise he hea