m his country excursions with the doctor, the
remembrance of his kindness and affection rendered him impervious to the
slights he received at home, so now did the prospect of seeing Cecile
people his solitude with dear phantoms and happy visions, that remained
with him even while he slept.

The next day he knocked at the Rivals' door.

"The doctor has not come in. Mademoiselle is in the office," was the
reply of the little servant who had replaced the faithful old woman he
had known. Jack turned to the office; he knocked hurriedly, impatient to
behold his former companion.

"Come in, Jack," said a sweet voice.

Instead of obeying, he was seized with a strange emotion of fear.

The door opened suddenly, and Jack asked himself if the charming
apparition on the threshold, in her blue dress and clustering blonde
hair, was not the sun itself. How intimidated he would have been had
not the little hand slipped into his own recalled so many sweet
recollections of their common child-hood!

"Life has been very hard for you, my grandfather tells me," she said. "I
have had much sorrow, too. Dear grandmamma is dead; she loved you, and
often spoke of you."

He sat opposite to her, looking at her. She was tall and graceful; as
she stood leaning against the corner of an old bookcase, she bent her
head slightly to talk to her friend, and reminded him of a bird.

Jack remembered that his mother was beautiful also; but in Cecile
there was something indefinable--an aroma of some divine spring-time,
something fresh and pure, to which Charlotte's mannerisms and graces
bore little resemblance.

Suddenly, while he sat in this ecstasy before her, he caught sight of
his own hand. It seemed enormous to him; it was black and hardened, and
the nails were broken and deformed,--irretrievably injured by contact
with fire and iron. He was ashamed, but could not conceal them even
by putting them in his pocket. But he saw himself now with the eyes of
others, dressed in shabby clothes and an old vest of D'Argenton's, that
was too small for him and too short in the sleeves. In addition to this
physical awkwardness, poor Jack was overwhelmed by the memory of all the
disgraceful scenes through which he had passed. The drunken orgies, the
hours of beastly intoxication, all returned to his recollection, and it
seemed to him that Cecile knew them, too. The slight cloud that hung on
her fair young brow, the compassion he read in her eyes, all told him