emples in long locks of the purest silver and fine as silk,
nearly to his shoulders.

He rose, tall and slight, a little stooped, all in black, with an ample
black velvet tunic, which was rather a gown than a coat, with loose
sleeves, showing his snowy shirt some way up the arm, and a pair of wrist
buttons, then quite out of fashion, which glimmered aristocratically with
diamonds.

I know I can't convey in words an idea of this apparition, drawn as it
seemed in black and white, venerable, bloodless, fiery-eyed, with its
singular look of power, and an expression so bewildering--was it derision,
or anguish, or cruelty, or patience?

The wild eyes of this strange old man were fixed upon me as he rose; an
habitual contraction, which in certain lights took the character of a
scowl, did not relax as he advanced toward me with his thin-lipped smile.
He said something in his clear, gentle, but cold voice, the import of
which I was too much agitated to catch, and he took both my hands in his,
welcomed me with a courtly grace which belonged to another age, and led me
affectionately, with many inquiries which I only half comprehended, to a
chair near his own.

'I need not introduce my daughter; she has saved me that mortification.
You'll find her, I believe, good-natured and affectionate; _au reste_, I
fear a very rustic Miranda, and fitted rather for the society of Caliban
than of a sick old Prospero. Is it not so, Millicent?'

The old man paused sarcastically for an answer, with his eyes fixed
severely on my odd cousin, who blushed and looked uneasily to me for a
hint.

'I don't know who they be--neither one nor t'other.'

'Very good, my dear,' he replied, with a little mocking bow. 'You see, my
dear Maud, what a Shakespearean you have got for a cousin. It's plain,
however, she has made acquaintance with some of our dramatists: she has
studied the role of _Miss Hoyden_ so perfectly.'

It was not a reasonable peculiarity of my uncle that he resented, with a
good deal of playful acrimony, my poor cousin's want of education, for
which, if he were not to blame, certainly neither was she.

'You see her, poor thing, a result of all the combined disadvantages of
want of refined education, refined companionship, and, I fear, naturally,
of refined tastes; but a sojourn at a good French conventual school will
do wonders, and I hope to manage by-and-by. In the meantime we jest at our
misfortunes, and love one another, I hope, cor