n contemptuous
rejection of his previous attempts to form her acquaintance; and he
could not quite reconcile the beaming smile on her lip, and the
sparkling radiance in her eyes, with the pallor which he saw settle
swiftly upon her face when his name was first pronounced.

"Ah! My son Cuthbert? Handsome young dog, and like his father, finds
beauty the most powerful magnet. Where did you meet him?"

"Once only, when he was introduced by our minister, who deputized him
to deliver to me some custom-house regulations.

"Did you meet Mrs. Laurance?"

"Your wife, sir?"

Annoyance instantaneously clouded his countenance, and Dr. Plymley
gnawed his lower lip to hide a smile.

"My son's wife. Cuthbert and I are the only survivors of my own
immediate family."

"If Madame had not so rigidly adhered to her recluse habits, she
could scarcely have failed to learn from his brilliant campaigns in
gay society that the General is unfettered by matrimonial bonds, and
almost as irresistible and popular as his naughty model D'Orsay."

"Madame, Plymley is a traitor, jealously stabbing my spotless
reputation. I deny the indictment, and appeal to your heavenly
charity, praying you to believe that I plead guilty only to the
possession of a heart tenderly vulnerable to the shafts of grace and
beauty."

The earnestness of his tone and manner was unmistakable, and beneath
the bold admiration of his fine eyes, the carmine came swiftly back
to her blanched cheek.

"_Beau monde_ and its fashionable foibles constitute a sealed volume
to me. My world is apart from that in which General Laurance wins
myrtle crowns, and wears them so royally."

"When genius like Madame's monopolizes the bay, we less gifted
mortals must even twine myrtle leaves, or else humbly bow, bare of
chaplets. But may I ask why you so sternly taboo that social world
which you are so pre-eminently fitted to grace and adorn? When your
worshippers are wellnigh frenzied with delight, watching you beyond
the footlights, you cruelly withdraw behind the impenetrable curtain
of seclusion; and only at rare intervals allow us tantalizing glimpses
of you, seated in mocking inaccessibility between those two most
abominable ancient griffons, whose claws and beaks are ever
ferociously prominent. When some desperate deluded adorer rashly
hires a band of Neapolitan experts to stab, and bury that grim pair
of jailers in the broad deep grave out there, toward Procida, the
crime of mur