rneath her lace flounces and diamond bracelets
Aurelia was a sullen, selfish woman, then I should turn sadly
homewards, for I should see that her jewels were flashing scorn upon
the object they adorned, and that her laces were of a more exquisite
loveliness than the woman whom they merely touched with a superficial
grace. It would be like a gaily decorated mausoleum--bright to see,
but silent and dark within.

"Great excellences, my dear Prue," I sometimes allow myself to say,
"lie concealed in the depths of character, like pearls at the bottom
of the sea. Under the laughing, glancing surface, how little they are
suspected! Perhaps love is nothing else than the sight of them by one
person. Hence every man's mistress is apt to be an enigma to everybody
else. I have no doubt that when Aurelia is engaged, people will say
that she is a most admirable girl, certainly; but they cannot
understand why any man should be in love with her. As if it were at
all necessary that they should! And her lover, like a boy who finds a
pearl in the public street, and wonders as much that others did not
see it as that he did, will tremble until he knows his passion is
returned; feeling, of course, that the whole world must be in love
with this paragon who cannot possibly smile upon anything so unworthy
as he."

"I hope, therefore, my dear Mrs. Prue," I continue to say to my wife,
who looks up from her work regarding me with pleased pride, as if I
were such an irresistible humorist, "you will allow me to believe that
the depth may be calm although the surface is dancing. If you tell me
that Aurelia is but a giddy girl, I shall believe that you think so.
But I shall know, all the while, what profound dignity, and sweetness,
and peace lie at the foundation of her character."

I say such things to Titbottom during the dull season at the office.
And I have known him sometimes to reply with a kind of dry, sad humor,
not as if he enjoyed the joke, but as if the joke must be made, that
he saw no reason why I should be dull because the season was so.

"And what do I know of Aurelia or any other girl?" he says to me with
that abstracted air. "I, whose Aurelias were of another century and
another zone."

Then he falls into a silence which it seems quite profane to
interrupt. But as we sit upon our high stools at the desk opposite
each other, I leaning upon my elbows and looking at him; he, with
sidelong face, glancing out of the window, as if it c