“Here's your library, sir. You've only to slide this mirror into the wall; and here are all your books. This press is your armory. Sir Roger gave the order himself for that breech-loader at Liège. This small closet has your bath,--always ready, as you see, sir,--hot and cold; and that knob yonder commands the shower-bath. It smells fresh of paint here just now, sir, for it was only finished on Saturday; and the men are coming to-day to fix a small iron staircase from your balcony down to the garden. Sir Roger said he was sure you would like it.” I was silent for a moment,--a moment of exquisite revery,--and then I asked if there were always people visitors at the Villa. “I may say, sir, indeed, next to always. We haven't dined alone since March last.” “How many usually come to dinner?” “Five or seven, sir; always an odd number. Seldom more than seven, and never above eleven, except a state dinner to some great swell going through.” “No ladies, of course?” “Pardon me, sir. The Countess Vander Neeve dined here yesterday; Madam Van Straaten, and Mrs. Cleremont--Excuse me, sir, there's Sir Roger's bell. I must go and tell him you've arrived.” When Nixon left me, I sat for full twenty minutes, like one walking out of a trance, and asking myself how much was real, and how much fiction, of all around me? My eyes wandered over the room, and from the beautiful little Gothic clock on the mantelpiece to the gilded pineapple from which my bed-curtains descended,--everything seemed of matchless beauty to me. Could I ever weary of admiring them? Would they seem to me every morning as I awoke as tasteful and as elegant as now they appeared to me? Oh, if dear mamma could but see them! If she but knew with what honor I was received, would not the thought go far to assuage the grief our separation cost her? And, last of all, came the thought, if she herself were here to live with me, to read with me, to be my companion as she used to be,--could life offer anything to compare with such happiness? And why should not this be? If papa really should love me, why might I not lead him to see to whom I owed all that made me worthy of his love? “Breakfast is served, sir, in the small breakfast-room,” said a servant, respectfully. “You must show me where that is,” said I, rising to follow him. And now we walked along a spacious corridor, and descended a splendid stair of white marble, with gilded banisters, and across an octagon hall, with a pyramid of flowering plants in the centre, and into a large gallery with armor on the walls, that I wished greatly to linger over and examine, and then into a billiard-room, and at last into the small breakfast-parlor, where a little table was laid out, and another servant stood in readiness to serve me. “Mr. Eccles, sir, will be down in a moment, if you 'll be pleased to wait for him,” said the man. “And who is Mr. Eccles?” asked I.