"The memory of past favors is like a rainbow, bright, vivid and
beautiful."



The professor, sitting before his untasted breakfast, is looking the
very picture of dismay. Two letters lie before him; one is in his
hand, the other is on the table-cloth. Both are open; but of one,
the opening lines--that tell of the death of his old friend--are
all he has read; whereas he has read the other from start to finish,
already three times. It is from the old friend himself, written a
week before his death, and very urgent and very pleading. The
professor has mastered its contents with ever-increasing
consternation.

Indeed so great a revolution has it created in his mind, that his
face--(the index of that excellent part of him)--has, for the
moment, undergone a complete change. Any ordinary acquaintance now
entering the professor's rooms (and those acquaintances might be
whittled down to quite a _little_ few), would hardly have known him.
For the abstraction that, as a rule, characterizes his features--the
way he has of looking at you, as if he doesn't see you, that
harasses the simple, and enrages the others--is all gone! Not a
trace of it remains. It has given place to terror, open and
unrestrained.

"A girl!" murmurs he in a feeble tone, falling back in his chair.
And then again, in a louder tone of dismay--"A _girl!"_ He pauses
again, and now again gives way to the fear that is destroying
him--"A _grown_ girl!"