“Where was I?” she began again, driving from her mind, with an effort, a tumultuous throng of hopes and fears. “Oh I well, you gentlemen handled your bows gracefully, of course, and all that, and Lucy was irresistible” (another flash), “of—course; but the central figure of the picture was Mr. Whacker. Dear Uncle Tom! Isn’t he a grand old man? I don’t know why it was, but when I saw in the midst of you his snowy head contrasting so strongly, so strangely, with Lucy’s youthful bloom, with the manly vigor of the rest, my eyes filled with tears. Was it so very foolish?” And her eyes, as she lifted them to his, half inquiring, half deprecatory, were suffused afresh with the divine dew of sympathy. “Foolish!” exclaimed the Don, with a vehemence so sudden that it made her start, his nostrils dilating and a dark flush mounting even to his forehead,—“foolish!” And bending over her he poured down into her swimming eyes a look so intense and searching that she felt that he was reading her very heart. “Thanks!” said he, with abrupt decision. “Thanks!” Mary breathed quicker, she knew not why. The tension was painful. “Yes,” said she, rather aimlessly, “and then you all looked so earnest, so serenely happy, so forgetful of this poor sordid world.” “Yes,” said he, musingly, “that seems to me the office of music,—to give rest to the weary, to smooth out the wrinkles from the brain and brow, to give respite; to enable us, for a time, at least, to forget.” He seemed to muse for a moment, then turning suddenly to her with a changed expression: “It was always so,” said he; then looking up quickly, “Do you like Homer?” “Homer!” exclaimed she, startled by the abrupt transition. “I cannot say that he is one of my favorite authors.” “Do you know, I cannot understand that?” “He is so very, very old,” pleaded she, in extenuation.