hour; it was an animating and amusing scene; and as we each held
tickets, we shared in the alternations of hope and fear raised by each
turn of the wheel. Two little girls, of five and six years old, drew
the numbers: and the prizes were duly proclaimed from the platform.
These prizes were numerous, though of small value. It so fell out that
Dr. John and I each gained one: mine was a cigar-case, his a lady's
head-dress--a most airy sort of blue and silver turban, with a streamer
of plumage on one side, like a snowy cloud. He was excessively anxious
to make an exchange; but I could not be brought to hear reason, and to
this day I keep my cigar-case: it serves, when I look at it, to remind
me of old times, and one happy evening.

Dr. John, for his part, held his turban at arm's length between his
finger and thumb, and looked at it with a mixture of reverence and
embarrassment highly provocative of laughter. The contemplation over,
he was about coolly to deposit the delicate fabric on the ground
between his feet; he seemed to have no shadow of an idea of the
treatment or stowage it ought to receive: if his mother had not come to
the rescue, I think he would finally have crushed it under his arm like
an opera-hat; she restored it to the band-box whence it had issued.

Graham was quite cheerful all the evening, and his cheerfulness seemed
natural and unforced. His demeanour, his look, is not easily described;
there was something in it peculiar, and, in its way, original. I read
in it no common mastery of the passions, and a fund of deep and healthy
strength which, without any exhausting effort, bore down Disappointment
and extracted her fang. His manner, now, reminded me of qualities I had
noticed in him when professionally engaged amongst the poor, the
guilty, and the suffering, in the Basse-Ville: he looked at once
determined, enduring, and sweet-tempered. Who could help liking him?
_He_ betrayed no weakness which harassed all your feelings with
considerations as to how its faltering must be propped; from _him_
broke no irritability which startled calm and quenched mirth; _his_
lips let fall no caustic that burned to the bone; _his_ eye shot no
morose shafts that went cold, and rusty, and venomed through your
heart: beside him was rest and refuge--around him, fostering sunshine.

And yet he had neither forgiven nor forgotten Miss Fanshawe. Once
angered, I doubt if Dr. Bretton were to be soon propitiated--once
alienated