istry, but had no
wish to contest the point with him.

"It is no merit in me, but, as you say, rather self-indulgence, to be
looking up and relieving destitute cases. But it would be merit in you,
if you don't like it; and you might have all that, and none of the
annoyances."

Her bright face glowed; and Fred liked to look at her when she was
excited; the coloring beat Titian's, he thought.

"You don't know how painful to me it is to hold out empty hands to so
many sufferers"--

But now Minnie's face looked so sorrowful that there was nothing
specially beautiful in the coloring, and Fred said, impatiently,--

"You bore me, Minnie. I am waiting to take my afternoon nap."

And he turned positively over towards the wall.

The sight of Minnie, swiftly walking through the driving storm to-day,
brought up to Fred's memory all the talk they had had in that very room,
he lying in the same place, a fortnight ago. Since that day he had not
seen Minnie, except casually; and, indeed, she seemed very busy and
very happy, if one might judge by her lighted face and her laden arm.
Something keener than philosophy, subtiler than Epicurus, pricked Fred,
as Minnie vanished into the cloud of snowflakes.

"Pshaw!"

He glanced around the apartment. It was still luxurious; but "custom had
staled the infinite variety" of its ornament and furnishing. Already he
was dissatisfied with this and that. Where to place a new bas-relief
that had struck him at Cotton's the day before, and which he had
purchased on the spot, without considering that there was no room for
it in the library? There it leaned against the wall,--not so big as the
Vicar's family-picture, but quite as much in the way.

"The room looks loaded. I ought to have a gallery for these things. I
wonder if I couldn't buy Carter's house, and push a gallery through from
the top of my stairway."

He touched the bell, and lay down again.

Martin entered softly, let down the crimson curtains, so as to exclude
the vanishing light, and stirred the crimson cannel into a newer
radiance.

"This weather frets my nerves, Martin. My face aches. Give me the bottle
of chloroform in my chamber."

He inhaled the subtile fluid two or three times, and handed it back to
Martin. It made no difference, he said. He would try to sleep. So Martin
went out on tiptoe and closed the door.

The chloroform probably did relieve him, for he thought no more of the
uneasiness in his face; but he was