was no merit, since she had been bred in a library; to which she
suddenly added:--"You are not unknown to me, Cavaliere; but I never
thought to see you here."

The words renewed her hearer's surprise; but giving him no time to
reply, she went on in a lower tone:--"You are young and the world is
fair before you. Have you considered that before risking yourself among
us?"

She coloured under Odo's wondering gaze, and at his random rejoinder
that it was a risk any man would gladly take without considering, she
turned from him with a gesture in which he fancied a shade of
disappointment.

By this they had reached the cabinet of fossils, about which the
interest of the other guests still seemed to centre. Alfieri, indeed,
paced the farther end of the room with the air of awaiting the despatch
of some tedious business; but the others were engaged in an animated
discussion necessitating frequent reference to the folios Vivaldi had
brought from his study.

The latter turned to Odo as though to include him in the group. "I do
not know, sir," said he, "whether you have found leisure to study these
enigmas of that mysterious Sphinx, the earth; for though Count Alfieri
has spoken to me of your unusual acquirements, I understand your tastes
have hitherto lain rather in the direction of philosophy and letters;"
and on Odo's prompt admission of ignorance, he courteously continued:
"The physical sciences seem, indeed, less likely to appeal to the
imaginative and poetical faculty in man, and, on the other hand,
religion has appeared to prohibit their too close investigation; yet I
question if any thoughtful mind can enter on the study of these curious
phenomena without feeling, as it were, an affinity between such
investigations and the most abstract forms of thought. For whether we
regard these figured stones as of terriginous origin, either mere lusus
naturae, or mineral formations produced by a plastic virtue latent in
the earth, or whether as in fact organic substances lapidified by the
action of water; in either case, what speculations must their origin
excite, leading us back into that dark and unexplored period of time
when the breath of Creation was yet moving on the face of the waters!"

Odo had listened but confusedly to the first words of this discourse;
but his intellectual curiosity was too great not to respond to such an
appeal, and all his perplexities slipped from him in the pursuit of the
Professor's thought.

O