thin, golden film over his unwinking eyes.

In the mean time, everything went on quietly enough after Cousin
Richard's return. A man of sense,--that is, a man who knows perfectly
well that a cool head is worth a dozen warm hearts in carrying the
fortress of a woman's affections, (not yours, "Astarte," nor yours,
"Viola,")--who knows that men are rejected by women every day because
they, the men, love them, and are accepted every day because they do
not, and therefore can study the arts of pleasing,--a man of sense,
when he finds he has established his second parallel too soon, retires
quietly to his first, and begins working on his covered ways again.
The whole art of love may be read in any Encyclopaedia under the title
Fortification, where the terms just used are explained. After the little
adventure of the necklace, Dick retreated at once to his first parallel.
Elsie loved riding,--and would go off with him on a gallop now and then.
He was a master of all those strange Indian horseback-feats which shame
the tricks of the circus-riders, and used to astonish and almost amuse
her sometimes by disappearing from his saddle, like a phantom horseman
lying flat against the side of the bounding creature that bore him, as
if he were a hunting leopard with his claws in the horse's flank and
flattening himself out against his heaving ribs. Elsie knew a little
Spanish too, which she had learned from the young person who had taught
her dancing, and Dick enlarged her vocabulary with a few soft
phrases, and would sing her a song sometimes, touching the air upon an
ancient-looking guitar they had found with the ghostly things in the
garret,--a quaint old instrument, marked E. M. on the back, and supposed
to have belonged to a certain Elizabeth Mascarene, before mentioned in
connection with a work of art,--a fair, dowerless lady, who smiled and
sung and faded away, unwedded, a hundred years ago, as dowerless ladies,
not a few, are smiling and singing and fading now,--God grant each of
them His love,--and one human heart as its interpreter!

As for school, Elsie went or stayed away as she liked. Sometimes, when
they thought she was at her desk in the great schoolroom, she would
be on The Mountain,--alone always. Dick wanted to go with her, but
she would never let him. Once, when she had followed the zigzag path
a little way up, she looked back and caught a glimpse of him following
her. She turned and passed him without a word, but givi