We entered a bustling and brilliantly-lighted house. Numerous guests were scattered about at different tables, variously engaged in getting rid of time at the smallest possible cost of reflection. The dwarf sauntered through the room, whispered a waiter, and, beckoning me to follow, led the way up-stairs to a lesser apartment, where we found ourselves alone. "You will not see much life here," I observed, rather surprised at his selection of a secluded room in preference to the lively _salon_ through which we had just passed. "We can make our own life," he answered, with a sarcastic twinge of the mouth, "and imagine more things in five minutes than we should see or hear below in a month." I thought this very odd. It looked as if he had some concealed motive; but I acquiesced in his notion, and was secretly pleased, not less at the exchange of the din and riot for ease and quietness, than at the opportunity it opened to him for the free play of the humor, whatever it was, that I could plainly see was working upon him. We drank freely--that was a great resource with him when he was in a mood of extravagance--talked rapidly about a chaos of things, laughed loudly, and in the pauses of the strange revel relapsed every now and then into silence and abstraction. During these brief and sudden intervals, the dwarf would amuse himself by drawing uncouth lines on the table, with his head hanging over them, as if his thoughts were elsewhere engaged, and the unintelligible pastime of his fingers were resorted to only to hide them. I could not tell why it was, but I felt uneasy and restless. My companion appeared to me like a man who was mentally laboring at some revelation, yet did not know how to begin it. He was constantly talking at something that was evidently troubling his mind, yet he still evaded his own purpose, as if he did not like the task to which he had set himself. Throughout the whole time he never mentioned Astræa's name, and this circumstance gave me additional cause for suspicion. At last, summoning up all his energy, and fixing himself with the points of his elbows on the table, and his long, wiry hands, which looked like talons, stretched up into his elfin hair at each side of his face, while his eyes, shooting out their malignant fires, were riveted upon me to scan the effect of what he was about to say, he suddenly exclaimed, "You have been remarked in your attentions to Astræa." The mystery was out. And what was there in it, after all? I was a free agent, and so was Astræa. Why should he make so much theatrical parade about so very simple a business? "Well!" I exclaimed, scarcely able to repress a smile, which the exaggerated earnestness of his manner excited. "Well! You acknowledge that it is so?" "Acknowledge? Why should I either acknowledge or deny it? There is no treason in it; the lady is the best judge--let me add, the only judge--of any attentions I may have paid to her."