and you can't tell me all. Good-night, Mr. Palma."

She shut her eyes.

This man of bronze who could terrify witnesses, torture and overwhelm
the opposition, and thunder so successfully from the legal rostrum,
sat there abashed by the child's tone and manner, and as he watched
her he could not avoid smiling at her imperious mandate. Although
silent, it was one o'clock before she fell into a deep, sound
slumber, and then the lawyer leaned forward and studied the dreamer.

The light from the lamp shone upon her, and the long silky black
lashes lay heavily on her white cheeks. Now and then a sigh passed
her lips, and once a dry sob shook her frame, as if she were again
passing through the painful ordeal of parting; but gradually the
traces of emotion disappeared, and that marvellous peace which we
find only in children's countenances, or on the faces of the
dead,--and which is nowhere more perfect than in old Greek
statuary,--settled like a benediction over her features. Her frail
hands clasped over her breast still held the faded lilies, and to
Erle Palma she seemed too tender and fair for rude contact with the
selfish world, in which he was so indefatigably carving out fame and
fortune. He wondered how long a time would be requisite to transform
this pure, spotless, ingenuous young thing into one of the fine
fashionable miniature women with frizzed hair and huge _paniers_,
whom he often met in the city, with school-books in their hands, and
bold, full-blown coquetry in their eyes?

Certainly he was as devoid of all romantic weakness as the
propositions of Euclid, or the pages of Blackstone, but something in