ith a smile of
imagined superiority. "Refinement, the polished manners of society, may
be substituted for the rigor of religious conviction."

"Polished manners without moral earnestness are mere hypocrisy,"
answered he decidedly. "A wolf, though enveloped in a thousand
lambskins, still retains his nature."

"How stern you are!" exclaimed she, laughing. "And what is the second
condition for the true enjoyment of life, Mr. Seraphin?"

"It is evidently the accord of moral consciousness with the behests of
a supreme authority; or to use the ordinary expression, a good
conscience," answered the millionaire earnestly.

A sneering expression spontaneously glided over her countenance. She
felt the hateful handwriting of her soul in her features, turned
crimson, and cast down her eyes in confusion. The young man had not
observed the expression of mockery, and could not account for her
confusion. He thought he had perhaps awkwardly wounded her
sensitiveness.

"I merely meant to express my private conviction," said Mr. Seraphin
apologetically.

"Which is grand and admirable," lauded she.

Her approbation pleased him, for his simplicity failed to detect the
concealed ridicule. After a walk outside of the city which Gerlach took
towards evening, in the company of the brother and sister, Carl
Greifmann made his appearance in Louise's apartment.

"You have at last succeeded in capturing him," began he with a chuckle
of satisfaction. "I was almost beginning to lose confidence in your
well-tried powers. This time you seemed unable to keep the field, to
the astonishment of all your acquaintances. They never knew you to be
baffled where the heart of a weak male was to be won."

"What are you talking about?"

"About the fat codfish of two million weight whom you have been
successful in angling."

"I do not understand you, most mysterious brother!"

"You do not understand me, and yet you blush like the skies before a
rainstorm! What means the vermilion of those cheeks, if you do not
understand?"

"I blush, first, on account of my limited understanding, which cannot
grasp your philosophy; and, secondly, because I am amazed at the
monstrous figures of your language."

"Then I shall have to speak without figures and similes upon a subject
which loses a great deal in the light of bare reality, which, I might
indeed say, loses all, dissolves into vapor, like will-o'-the-wisps and
cloud phantoms before the rising sun. I hardly