ore bewildering than those of age,
and a decade scarcely perceptible in an old civilization often means
utter revolution to the new. It did not seem strange to me, therefore,
on meeting Jack Bracy twelve years after, to find that he had forgotten
Miss Circe, or that SHE had married, and was living unhappily with a
middle-aged adventurer by the name of Jason, who was reputed to have had
domestic relations elsewhere. But although subjugated and exorcised,
she at least was reminiscent. To my inquiries about the Sluysdaels, she
answered with a slight return of her old vivacity:--

"Ah, yes, dear fellow, he was one of my greatest admirers."

"He was about four years old when you knew him, wasn't he?" suggested
Jason meanly. "Yes, they usually WERE young, but so kind of you to
recollect them. Young Sluysdael," he continued, turning to me, "is--but
of course you know that disgraceful story."

I felt that I could stand this no longer. "Yes," I said indignantly,
"I know all about the school, and I don't call his conduct disgraceful
either."

Jason stared. "I don't know what you mean about the school," he
returned. "I am speaking of his stepfather."

"His STEPFATHER!"

"Yes; his father, Van Buren Sluysdael, died, you know--a year after they
left Greyport. The widow was left all the money in trust for Johnny,
except about twenty-five hundred a year which he was in receipt of as a
separate income, even as a boy. Well, a glib-tongued parson, a fellow by
the name of Belcher, got round the widow--she was a desperate fool--and,
by Jove! made her marry him. He made ducks and drakes of not only her
money, but Johnny's too, and had to skip to Spain to avoid the trustees.
And Johnny--for the Sluysdaels are all fools or lunatics--made over his
whole separate income to that wretched, fashionable fool of a mother,
and went into a stockbroker's office as a clerk."

"And walks to business before eight every morning, and they say even
takes down the shutters and sweeps out," broke in Circe impulsively.
"Works like a slave all day, wears out his old clothes, has given up his
clubs and amusements, and shuns society."

"But how about his health?" I asked. "Is he better and stronger?"

"I don't know," said Circe, "but he LOOKS as beautiful as Endymion."

*****

At his bank, in Wall Street, Bracy that afternoon confirmed all that
Jason had told me of young Sluysdael. "But his temper?" I asked. "You
remember his temper--surely."

"He's