ell into a pleasant dreamy
state in which she seemed to be the companion of those giant men, of
their own lineage, at any rate, and the insignificant present moment was
put to shame. That magnificent ghostly head on the canvas, surely, never
beheld all the trivialities of a Sunday afternoon, and it did not seem
to matter what she and this young man said to each other, for they were
only small people.

"This is a copy of the first edition of the poems," she continued,
without considering the fact that Mr. Denham was still occupied with the
manuscript, "which contains several poems that have not been reprinted,
as well as corrections." She paused for a minute, and then went on, as
if these spaces had all been calculated.

"That lady in blue is my great-grandmother, by Millington. Here is my
uncle's walking-stick--he was Sir Richard Warburton, you know, and rode
with Havelock to the Relief of Lucknow. And then, let me see--oh, that's
the original Alardyce, 1697, the founder of the family fortunes, with
his wife. Some one gave us this bowl the other day because it has their
crest and initials. We think it must have been given them to celebrate
their silver wedding-day."

Here she stopped for a moment, wondering why it was that Mr. Denham said
nothing. Her feeling that he was antagonistic to her, which had lapsed
while she thought of her family possessions, returned so keenly that
she stopped in the middle of her catalog and looked at him. Her mother,
wishing to connect him reputably with the great dead, had compared him
with Mr. Ruskin; and the comparison was in Katharine's mind, and led
her to be more critical of the young man than was fair, for a young man
paying a call in a tail-coat is in a different element altogether from
a head seized at its climax of expressiveness, gazing immutably from
behind a sheet of glass, which was all that remained to her of Mr.
Ruskin. He had a singular face--a face built for swiftness and decision
rather than for massive contemplation; the forehead broad, the nose long
and formidable, the lips clean-shaven and at once dogged and sensitive,
the cheeks lean, with a deeply running tide of red blood in them. His
eyes, expressive now of the usual masculine impersonality and authority,
might reveal more subtle emotions under favorable circumstances, for
they were large, and of a clear, brown color; they seemed unexpectedly
to hesitate and speculate; but Katharine only looked at him to wonder