tanley, were he in my place,--that
you will let me prove myself your elder brother,--your truest, best
friend."

He put his hand on her head, but she recoiled haughtily from his
touch.

"Dr. Grey, I promise you,

'I will not soil thy purple with my dust,
Nor breathe my poison on thy Venice-glass.'

I promise you that if misfortune, failure, and penury lay hold of me,
you shall be the last human being who will learn it; for I will cloak
myself under a name that will not betray me, and crawl into some
lazaretto, and be buried in some potter's field, among other
mendicants,--unknown, 'unwept, unhonored, and unsung.'"

If some motherless young chamois, rescued from destruction, and
pampered and caressed, had suddenly turned, and savagely bitten and
lacerated the hand that fondled and fed it, Dr. Grey would not have
been more painfully startled; but experience had taught him the
uselessness of expostulation during her moods of perversity, and he
took his hat and turned away, saying, almost sternly,--

"Bear in mind that neither palace nor potter's field can screen you
from the scrutiny of your Maker, or mask and shelter your shivering
soul in the solemn hour when He demands its last reckoning."

"Which 'reckoning,' your eminently Christian charity assures you will
prove more terrible for me than the Bloody Assizes. 'By the memory of
our friendship!' Oh, shallow sham! Pinning my faith to the _dictum_,
'The tide of friendship does not rise high on the bank of perfection,'
my fatuity led me to expect that your friendship was wide as the
universe, and lasting as eternity. Wise Helvetius told me that, 'To be
loved, we should merit but little esteem; all superiority attracts awe
and aversion;' _ergo_, since my credentials of unworthiness were
indisputable, I laid claim to a vast share of your favor. But, alas!
the logic of the seers is well-nigh as hollow as my hopes."

He looked over his shoulder at her, with an expression of pity as
profound as that which must have filled the eyes of the angel, who,
standing in the blaze of the sword of wrath, watched Adam and Eve go
mournfully forth into the blistering heats of unknown lands. Before he
could reply, she laughed contemptuously, and continued,--

"_Nil desperandum_, Dr. Grey. Remember that, 'Faith and persistency
are life's architects; while doubt and despair bury all under the
ruins of any endeavor.' When I have trilled a fortune into that
abhorred vacuum, my pock