hty natures, he detected at once, and disliked
heartily, that something of gaudy, false, exaggerated, and hollow which
pervaded Gabriel Varney's talk and manner,--even the trick of his walk
and the cut of his dress. And Ardworth wanted that boyish and beautiful
luxuriance of character which belonged to Percival St. John, easy to
please and to be pleased, and expanding into the warmth of admiration
for all talent and all distinction. For art, if not the highest,
Ardworth cared not a straw; it was nothing to him that Varney painted
and composed, and ran showily through the jargon of literary babble,
or toyed with the puzzles of unsatisfying metaphysics. He saw but a
charlatan, and he had not yet learned from experience what strength
and what danger lie hid in the boa parading its colours in the sun, and
shifting, in the sensual sportiveness of its being, from bough to bough.

Varney halted in the middle of the room as his eye rested first on
Ardworth, and then glanced towards Madame Dalibard. But Ardworth, jarred
from his revery or resolves by the sound of a voice discordant to his
ear at all times, especially in the mood which then possessed him,
scarcely returned Varney's salutation, buttoned his coat over his
chest, seized his hat, and upsetting two chairs, and very considerably
disturbing the gravity of a round table, forced his way to Madame
Dalibard, pressed her hand, and said in a whisper, "I shall see you
again soon," and vanished.

Varney, smoothing his hair with fingers that shone with rings, slid into
the seat next Madame Dalibard, which Ardworth had lately occupied, and
said: "If I were a Clytemnestra, I should dread an Orestes in such a
son!"

Madame Dalibard shot towards the speaker one of the sidelong, suspicious
glances which of old had characterized Lucretia, and said,--

"Clytemnestra was happy! The Furies slept to her crime, and haunted but
the avenger."

"Hist!" said Varney.

The door opened, and Ardworth reappeared.

"I quite forgot what I half came to know. How is Helen? Did she return
home safe?"

"Safe--yes!"

"Dear girl, I am glad to hear it! Where is she? Not gone to those
Miverses again? I am no aristocrat, but why should one couple together
refinement and vulgarity?"

"Mr. Ardworth," said Madame Dalibard, with haughty coldness, "my niece
is under my care, and you will permit me to judge for myself how to
discharge the trust. Mr. Mivers is her own relation,--a nearer one than
you a