had given him an idea of what the rapture would be, when, wherever
he went, the monster digit (to hint a classical phrase) of the
collective admiring public would be lifted to point him out, and the
whisper would pass from one to another, "That's him! That's Hopkins!"

Mr. Murray Bradshaw had been watching the opportunity for carrying out
his intentions, with his pleasant smile covering up all that was
passing in his mind, and Master Byles Gridley, looking equally
unconcerned, had been watching him. The young man's time came at last.
Some were at the supper-table, some were promenading, some were talking,
when he managed to get Myrtle a little apart from the rest, and led her
towards one of the recesses in the apartment, where two chairs were
invitingly placed. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were
sparkling,--the influences to which he had trusted had not been thrown
away upon her. He had no idea of letting his purpose be seen until he
was fully ready. It required all his self-mastery to avoid betraying
himself by look or tone, but he was so natural that Myrtle was thrown
wholly off her guard. He meant to make her pleased with herself to begin
with, and that not by point-blank flattery, of which she had had more
than enough of late, but rather by suggestion and inference, so that she
should find herself feeling happy without knowing how. It would be easy
to glide from that to the impression she had produced upon him, and get
the two feelings more or less mingled in her mind. And so the simple
confession he meant to make would at length evolve itself logically, and
hold by a natural connection to the first agreeable train of thought
which he had called up. Not the way, certainly, that most young men
would arrange their great trial scene; but Murray Bradshaw was a lawyer
in love as much as in business, and considered himself as pleading a
cause before a jury of Myrtle Hazard's conflicting motives. What would
any lawyer do in a jury case, but begin by giving the twelve honest men
and true to understand, in the first place, that their intelligence and
virtue were conceded by all, and that he himself had perfect confidence
in them, and leave them to shape their verdict in accordance with these
propositions and his own side of the case?

Myrtle had, perhaps, never so seriously inclined her ear to the pleasing
accents of the young pleader. He flattered her with so much tact, that
she thought she heard an unconscious echo th