a great past sorrow.

Was this the old love and the old pain again, he wondered, or was it
only the sharp thrust of a bitter memory? He had believed himself cured
of his useless love--a great and noble love, wasted on a smaller nature
than his own. He had thought that because his eyes were opened, and he
understood the character of the girl he loved, his cure must needs be
complete. Yet now, face to face with the well-remembered landscape,
looking down upon that dull grey lake which he had seen smiling in the
sunshine, he began to doubt the completeness of his cure. He recalled
the lovely face, the graceful form, the sweet, low voice--the perfection
of gracious womanhood, manner, dress, movements, tones, smiles, all
faultless; and in the absence of that one figure, it seemed to him as if
he had come back to a tenantless, dismantled house, where there was
nothing that made life worth living.

The red sun went down--a fierce and lurid face that seemed to scowl
through the grey--and Mr. Hammond felt that it was time to arouse
himself from gloomy meditation and go in and dress for dinner.
Maulevrier's valet was to arrive by the coach with the heavier part of
the luggage, and Maulevrier's valet did that very small portion of
valeting which was ever required by Mr. Hammond. A man who has worked at
a forge in the backwoods is not likely to be finicking in his ways, or
dependent upon servants for looking after his raiment.

Despite Mr. Hammond's gloomy memories of past joys and disillusions, he
contrived to make himself very agreeable, by-and-by, at dinner, and in
the drawing-room after dinner, and the evening was altogether gay and
sprightly. Maulevrier was in high spirits, full of his Parisian
experiences, and talking slang as glibly as a student of the Quartier
Latin. He would talk nothing but French, protesting that he had almost
forgotten his native tongue, and his French was the language of
Larchey's Dictionary of Argot, in which nothing is called by its right
name. Mary was enchanted with this new vocabulary, and wanted to have
every word explained to her; but Maulevrier confessed that there was a
good deal that was unexplainable.

The evening was much livelier than those summer evenings when the
dowager and Lady Lesbia were present. There was something less of
refinement, perhaps, and Fraeulein remonstrated now and then about some
small violation of the unwritten laws of 'Anstand,' but there was more
mirth. Maulevr