produced by this
habit of his fostered strange delusions in the minds of people who did
not know him very well: and sometimes the practical results, in the way
of expected charities or what not, amazed him. He could not understand
why people should have made such mistakes, and resented them as an
injustice.

And as they sat at dinner on this still, brilliant evening in summer, it
was Sheila's turn to be clothed in the garments of romance. Her father,
with his great gray beard and heavy brow, became the King of Thule,
living in this solitary house overlooking the sea, and having memories
of a dead sweetheart. His daughter, the princess, had the glamour of a
thousand legends dwelling in her beautiful eyes; and when she walked by
the shores of the Atlantic, that were now getting yellow under the
sunset, what strange and unutterable thoughts must appear in the wonder
of her face! He remembered no more how he had pulled to pieces Ingram's
praises of Sheila. What had become of the "ordinary young lady, who
would be a little interesting, if a little stupid, before marriage, and
after marriage sink into the dull, domestic hind"? There could be no
doubt that Sheila often sat silent for a considerable time, with her
eyes fixed on her father's face when he spoke, or turning to look at
some other speaker. Had Lavender now been asked if this silence had not
a trifle of dullness in it, he would have replied by asking if there
were dullness in the stillness and the silence of the sea. He grew to
regard her calm and thoughtful look as a sort of spell; and if you had
asked him what Sheila was like, he would have answered by saying that
there was moonlight in her face.

The room, too, in which this mystic princess sat was strange and
wonderful. There were no doors visible, for the four walls were
throughout covered by a paper of foreign manufacture, representing
spacious Tyrolese landscapes and incidents of the chase. When Lavender
had first entered this chamber his eye had been shocked by these coarse
and prominent pictures--by the green rivers, the blue lakes and the
snow-peaks that rose above certain ruddy chalets. Here a chamois was
stumbling down a ravine, and there an operatic peasant, some eight or
ten inches in actual length, was pointing a gun. The large figures, the
coarse colors, the impossible scenes--all this looked, at first sight,
to be in the worst possible taste; and Lavender was convinced that
Sheila had nothing to do