It was a lucky thing for her, perhaps, although a sad one for poor me, that her father was so close at hand; else how could I have controlled myself? For, being a little repressed, she turned the ardent appeal of her eyes on me, quite as if--quite as if I had been a member of the family. And when I smiled, not reassurance only, but most loyal encouragement, what did she do but glide away from papa, and sit down by the visitor! "Oh, Grace, you are graceful enough," thought I, "for yourself, and for any stockbroker. But if you want to know how to sit down, you must come and see Dariel do it." For she had told Jackson, and he in his lunacy thought it too good to be kept to himself, that her brother George, if he got the wife he wanted, would be obliged to put her through a course of chair-drill before he could give a dinner-party! How I trembled to find myself sitting at her side, indoors, unhurried, with the sanction of authority, civilised, waiting for a cup of coffee, watching the turn of her exquisite hands, nettled by the dancing of the clustered hair, which drew a veil, always at the most provoking moment, over the lustrous speech of those myriad-flashing and yet ever gentle eyes, as the filigree of some crafty jeweller tempers and deepens the delight within! What was there for me? Could a common sort of fellow, with nothing but rough truth and deep worship to commend him, dare to suppose that he could ever get in there, and be cherished as the owner of the heart that moved the whole? I assure you that I made a great fool of myself; though such an assurance is superfluous to any man who has ever earned his salt. I had just enough sense left to say "Yes" or "No," with a "Please" in a deep breath now and then, and a "Thank you" that took away breath altogether. Dariel, who was as fit as a fiddle--how those low expressions spoil one's most exalted moments!--saw with her ill-timed serenity the confounded tumult of my system; and, as she told me in the wiser days, felt ashamed of herself for enjoying it. Ah, me! it is not often, in the little square-round of human life, that we get tossed over the boundaries thus, with the profundity of misery struggling with the sublimity of ecstasy. "My dear young friend," said the tranquil Lesghian, who had let his eyes follow the lines of his beard in amiable serenity, though there must have been a stealthy smile under it, "few things are more gratifying than to have one's own productions valued by those who understand the subject, and speak without prepossession; especially when the producer has departed from general usage, and carried out his own opinions. You are really sure that you admire----" "Admire is too weak a word, Sûr Imar,"--my eyes were still upon the charming result of his system of education,--"worship, love, adore, enshrine----"