self, Miss Eloise," said Mr. St.
George, "if a year ago, you had seen your image prospected on the canvas
of a dark and lonely highway, extremely late at night, or early in the
morning,--as you choose,--with, for sole companion, a creature who
indulges himself in pipes, porter, and parties, a usurper, a
demagogue,--in fact, one who can be represented only as disreputable? A
very improper young woman?"

One year ago! The tears sprang to Eloise's eyes. She dared not look up,
but let them fall from the downcast lashes. Yet Mr. St. George saw them.

"And what is there, so painful in the picture, may I ask?" said he.

"A year ago my father was alive, Mr. St. George."

A change came over his face,--pallor like a soft cloud.

"Yet you are better off than I," he said, with singular unreserve for
him. "It is twelve times as long since _my_ father was with _me_. And
you could hardly have worshipped the one more than I worship the memory
of the other."

Yet, as if this at least were a sympathy between them, his manner became
for the moment tenderer, and he forgot himself in order to arouse her.
For Eloise was already full of reproach at having made one at so gay a
reunion,--not remembering that all the rest had seriously vowed they
would stay at home, unless she joined them, and that the wedding had
been also that of a dear friend. So Mr. St. George was no longer lofty;
he told her strange legends of the region that somehow she had never
heard, repeated tiny droplets of song that would have lost their
volatile essence in any alembic of translation, pointed out to her all
the signs of the night, for the nonce forgot politics, and gathered
spray after spray of the gorgeous creepers from the way-side, whose
names and natures he knew.

"How is it," she asked, "that you, whose mind is certainly filled with
things of an apparently vaster scale,--with legislation and war and
finance,--can care for these bubbles, these songs and flowers?"

"Do you know Homer, Miss Eloise,--Chapman's Homer? Although I'm not sure
but that the old English poet breathes a bloom upon the Greek. Well, I
do not forget, that, when the envoys went to appease the enraged
AEacides, that thunderer in arms,--

"The quarter of the Myrmidons they reached, and found him set
Delighted with his solemn harp, which curiously was fret
With works conceited through the verge; the bawdrick that embraced
His lofty neck was silver twist; this, when his ha