All the while Hiram, with quick breath, and heightened color, and whirling brain, was striving hard and failing fast to keep his wits about him. What was most annoying of all, the young lady, though so accommodating and familiar as a partner to practise with under the master's eye, when the exercise was over appeared perfectly and absolutely indifferent to Hiram. She was quite insensible to every little byplay of his to attract her notice, which, as he advanced in her acquaintance, he began to practice before the lesson commenced, or after it was finished. The fact is, whoever or whatever she might be, she evidently held Hiram in great contempt as a greenhorn. Strange to say, for once all his powers of fascination failed; and the more he tried to call them forth, the more signal was his discomfiture. It does not appear that Hiram, after finishing his education with Signor Alberto, attempted to continue his acquaintance with his partner in the waltz. Once during the course he did ask the young lady where she lived, and intimated that he would be pleased to call and see her; but the observation was received with such evident signs of dissatisfaction, that he never renewed the subject, and it is doubtful if he ever explained to himself satisfactorily his failure to get in the good graces of such a handsome girl and so perfect a waltzer. CHAPTER X. The Rev. Augustus Myrtle, rector of St. Jude's, was one of those circumstances of nature which are only to be encountered in metropolitan life. This seems a paradox. I will explain. All his qualities were born with him, not acquired, and those qualities could only shine in the aristocratic and fashionable circles of a large city. As animals by instinct avoid whatever is noxious and hurtful, so Augustus Myrtle from his infancy by instinct avoided all poor people and all persons not in the 'very first society.' Children are naturally democrats; school is a great leveller. Augustus Myrtle recognized no such propositions. While a boy at the academy, while a youth in college, he sought the intimacy of boys and youths of rich persons of _ton_. It was not enough that a young fellow was well bred and had a good social position--he must be rich. It was not enough that he was rich--he must have position. I do not think that Augustus Myrtle sat down carefully to calculate all this. So I say it was instinctive--born with him. A person who frequents only the society of the well bred and the wealthy must, to a degree at least, possess refined and elegant and expensive tastes, and it was so in the case of Myrtle. His tastes were refined and elegant and expensive.