master of the house, mildly Jewish. The
third was distressingly branded with the slum and gutter signs of the
Ahasuerus race. Three hats on his head could not have done it more
effectively. The vindictive caricatures of the God Pan, executed by
priests of the later religion burning to hunt him out of worship in the
semblance of the hairy, hoofy, snouty Evil One, were not more loathsome.
She sank on a sofa. That the man? Oh! Jew, and fifty times over Jew!
nothing but Jew!

The three stepped into the long saloon, and she saw how veritably
magnificent was the first whom she had noticed.

She sat at her lamb's-wool work in the little ivory frame, feeding on the
contrast. This man's face was the born orator's, with the light-giving
eyes, the forward nose, the animated mouth, all stamped for speechfulness
and enterprise, of Cicero's rival in the forum before he took the
headship of armies and marched to empire.

The gifts of speech, enterprise, decision, were marked on his features
and his bearing, but with a fine air of lordly mildness. Alas, he could
not be other than Christian, so glorious was he in build! One could
vision an eagle swooping to his helm by divine election. So vigorously
rich was his blood that the swift emotion running with the theme as he
talked pictured itself in passing and was like the play of sheet
lightning on the variations of the uninterrupted and many-glancing
outpour. Looking on him was listening. Yes, the looking on him sufficed.
Here was an image of the beauty of a new order of godlike men, that
drained an Indian Bacchus of his thin seductions at a breath-reduced him
to the state of nursery plaything, spangles and wax, in the contemplation
of a girl suddenly plunged on the deeps of her womanhood. She shrank to
smaller and smaller as she looked.

Be sure that she knew who he was. No, says she. But she knew. It
terrified her soul to think he was Alvan. She feared scarcely less that
it might not be he. Between these dreads of doubt and belief she played
at cat and mouse with herself, escaped from cat, persecuted mouse, teased
herself, and gloated. It is he! not he! he! not he! most certainly!
impossible!--And then it ran: If he, oh me! If another, woe me! For she
had come to see Alvan. Alvan and she shared ideas. They talked
marvellously alike, so as to startle Count Kollin: and supposing he was
not Alvan, it would be a bitter disappointment. The supposition that he
was, threatened her with in