e to think of him as evolving any taste of his own. An uncle had
left him a collection already noted among bibliophiles; the existence of
the collection was the only fact that had ever shed glory on the name of
Gryce, and the nephew took as much pride in his inheritance as though it
had been his own work. Indeed, he gradually came to regard it as such,
and to feel a sense of personal complacency when he chanced on any
reference to the Gryce Americana. Anxious as he was to avoid personal
notice, he took, in the printed mention of his name, a pleasure so
exquisite and excessive that it seemed a compensation for his shrinking
from publicity.

To enjoy the sensation as often as possible, he subscribed to all the
reviews dealing with book-collecting in general, and American history in
particular, and as allusions to his library abounded in the pages of
these journals, which formed his only reading, he came to regard himself
as figuring prominently in the public eye, and to enjoy the thought of
the interest which would be excited if the persons he met in the street,
or sat among in travelling, were suddenly to be told that he was the
possessor of the Gryce Americana.

Most timidities have such secret compensations, and Miss Bart was
discerning enough to know that the inner vanity is generally in
proportion to the outer self-depreciation. With a more confident person
she would not have dared to dwell so long on one topic, or to show such
exaggerated interest in it; but she had rightly guessed that Mr. Gryce's
egoism was a thirsty soil, requiring constant nurture from without. Miss
Bart had the gift of following an undercurrent of thought while she
appeared to be sailing on the surface of conversation; and in this case
her mental excursion took the form of a rapid survey of Mr. Percy Gryce's
future as combined with her own. The Gryces were from Albany, and but
lately introduced to the metropolis, where the mother and son had come,
after old Jefferson Gryce's death, to take possession of his house in
Madison Avenue--an appalling house, all brown stone without and black
walnut within, with the Gryce library in a fire-proof annex that looked
like a mausoleum. Lily, however, knew all about them: young Mr. Gryce's
arrival had fluttered the maternal breasts of New York, and when a girl
has no mother to palpitate for her she must needs be on the alert for
herself. Lily, therefore, had not only contrived to put herself in the
young m