and I am going to make the best of it." His
nobleness, his moral elegance, compelled him to this, and I envied him,
not sure if I myself, thus placed, would acquit myself so well. And
there was in his sweetness a contagion that strangely reconciled me to
the troubled aspects of our national hour. I thought, "Invisible among
our eighty millions there is a quiet legion living untainted in the
depths, while the yellow rich, the prismatic scum and bubbles, boil on
the surface." Yes, he had accidentally helped me, and I wished doubly
that I might help him. It was well enough he should feel he must not
shirk his duty, but how much better if he could be led to see that
marrying where he did not love was no duty of his.

I knew what I had to say to him, but lacked the beginning of it; and
of this beginning I was in search as we drove up among the live-oaks of
Udolpho to the little club-house, or hunting lodge, where a negro and
his wife received us, and took the baskets and set about preparing
supper. My beginning sat so heavily upon my attention that I took
scant notice of Udolpho as we walked about its adjacent grounds in the
twilight before supper, and John Mayrant pointed out to me its fine old
trees, its placid stream, and bade me admire the snug character of the
hunting lodge, buried away for bachelors' delights deep in the heart of
the pleasant forest. I heard him indulging in memories and anecdotes of
date sittings after long hunts; but I was myself always on a hunt for my
beginning, and none of his words clearly reached my intelligence until I
was aware of his reciting an excellently pertinent couplet:--

"If you would hold your father's land,
You must wash your throat before your hand--"

and found myself standing by the lodge table, upon which he had set two
glasses, containing, I soon ascertained, gin, vermouth, orange bitters,
and a cherry at the bottom--all which he had very skillfully mingled
himself in the happiest proportions.

"The poetry," he remarked, "is hereditary in my family;" and setting
down the empty glasses we also washed our hands. A moon half-grown
looked in at the window from the filmy darkness, and John, catching
sight of it, paused with the wet soap in his hand and stared out at the
dimly visible trees. "Oh, the times, the times!" he murmured to himself,
gazing long; and then with a sort of start he returned to the present
moment, and rinsed and dried his hands. Presently