utiful colors as well as women. A hundred years
ago a gentleman in pink silk was a gentleman properly dressed. Fifteen
hundred years ago the patricians of the classic times wore bracelets
exactly like mine. I despise the brutish contempt for beauty and the
mean dread of expense which degrade a gentleman's costume to black
cloth, and limit a gentleman's ornaments to a finger-ring, in the age I
live in. I like to be bright and I beautiful, especially when brightness
and beauty come to see me. You don't know how precious your society
is to me. This is one of my melancholy days. Tears rise unbidden to my
eyes. I sigh and sorrow over myself; I languish for pity. Just think of
what I am! A poor solitary creature, cursed with a frightful deformity.
How pitiable! how dreadful! My affectionate heart--wasted. My
extraordinary talents--useless or misapplied. Sad! sad! sad! Please pity
me."

His eyes were positively filled with tears--tears of compassion for
himself! He looked at me and spoke to me with the wailing, querulous
entreaty of a sick child wanting to be nursed. I was utterly at a
loss what to do. It was perfectly ridiculous--but I was never more
embarrassed in my life.

"Please pity me!" he repeated. "Don't be cruel. I only ask a little
thing. Pretty Mrs. Valeria, say you pity me!"

I said I pitied him--and I felt that I blushed as I did it.

"Thank you," said Miserrimus Dexter, humbly. "It does me good. Go a
little further. Pat my hand."

I tried to restrain myself; but the sense of the absurdity of this last
petition (quite gravely addressed to me, remember!) was too strong to be
controlled. I burst out laughing.

Miserrimus Dexter looked at me with a blank astonishment which only
increased my merriment. Had I offended him? Apparently not. Recovering
from his astonishment, he laid his head luxuriously on the back of his
chair, with the expression of a man who was listening critically to a
performance of some sort. When I had quite exhausted myself, he raised
his head and clapped his shapely white hands, and honored me with an
"encore."

"Do it again," he said, still in the same childish way. "Merry Mrs.
Valeria, _you_ have a musical laugh--_I_ have a musical ear. Do it
again."

I was serious enough by this time. "I am ashamed of myself, Mr. Dexter,"
I said. "Pray forgive me."

He made no answer to this; I doubt if he heard me. His variable temper
appeared to be in course of undergoing some new change. He sa