Over the door of that office, where the Angel of Death had smitten his father thirty-five years before, a new sign swung in the breeze, and showed the citizens the name of "Dr. Ulpian Grey. Office hours from nine to ten, and from two to three." The members of the profession called formally to welcome him to a share of their annual profits, and collectively gave him a dinner; the "best families" invited him to tea or luncheon, croquet or "German," and thus, having accomplished his professional and social _debut_, Ulpian Grey, M.D., henceforth claimed and exercised the privilege of selecting his associates, and employing his time as inclination prompted. In the comprehensive course of study to which he had so long devoted his attention, he had not omitted that immemorial stereotyped volume--Human Nature--which, despite the attempted revisions of sages, politicians, and ecclesiastics, remains as immutable as the everlasting hills; printing upon the leaves of the youngest century phases of guilt and guilelessness which find their prototypes in the gray dawn of time, when the "morning stars sang together,"--yea, busy to-day as of yore, slaughtering Abel, stoning Stephen, fretting Moses, crucifying Christ. Finding much that was admirable, and more that seemed ignoble, he gravely and reverently sought to possess himself of the subtle arcana of this marvellous book, rejecting as equally erroneous and unreliable the magnifying zeal of optimism and the gloomy jaundiced lenses of sneering pessimism,--thoroughly satisfied that it was a solemn duty, obligatory upon all, to study that complex paradoxical human nature, for the mastery of which Lucifer and Jesus had ceaselessly battled since the day when Adam and Eve were called "to dress and to keep" the Garden by the Euphrates,--that heaven-born, heaven-cursed, restless human nature, which now, as then,-- "Grasps at the fruitage forbidden, The golden pomegranates of Eden, To quiet its fever and pain." A few days' residence under the same roof, and a guarded observation of Salome's conduct, sufficed to acquaint Dr. Grey with the ungenerous motives that induced her chagrin at his return; and, without permitting her to suspect that he had so accurately read her character, he endeavored as unobtrusively as possible to bridge by kindness and courtesy the chasm of jealous distrust which divided them. Indolent and self-indulgent, she neither brooked dictation, nor gracefully accepted any suggestions at variance with the reigning whim; for, since she became an inmate of Miss Jane's hospitable home, existence had been a mere dreamy, aimless succession of golden dawns and scarlet-curtained sunsets--a slow, quiet lapsing of weeks into months,--an almost stagnant stream curled by no eddies, freighted with few aspirations, bearing no drift.