The music, and the doleful tale,
The rich and balmy eve,"--

though he hardly expected such startling results as happened in that
case,--which might be taken as an awful warning not to sing moving
ballads to young ladies of susceptible feelings, unless one is prepared
for very serious consequences. Without expecting that Myrtle would rush
into his arms, he did think that she could not help listening to him in
the intervals of the delicious music, in some recess where the roses and
jasmines and heliotropes made the air heavy with sweetness, and the
crimson curtains drooped in heavy folds that half hid their forms from
the curious eyes all round them. Her heart would swell like Genevieve's
as he told her in simple phrase that she was his life, his love, his
all,--for in some two or three words like these he meant to put his
appeal, and not in fine poetical phrases: that would do for Gifted
Hopkins and rhyming tom-tits of that feather.

Full of his purpose, involving the plans of his whole life, implying, as
he saw clearly, a brilliant future or a disastrous disappointment, with a
great unexploded mine of consequences under his feet, and the spark ready
to fall into it, he walked about the gilded saloon with a smile upon his
lips so perfectly natural and pleasant, that one would have said he was
as vacant of any aim, except a sort of superficial good-matured
disposition to be amused, as the blankest-eyed simpleton who had tied
himself up in a white cravat and come to bore and be bored.

Yet under this pleasant smile his mind was so busy with its thoughts that
he had forgotten all about the guests from Oxbow Village who, as Myrtle
had told him, were to come this evening. His eye was all at once caught
by a familiar figure, and he recognized Master Byles Gridley, accompanied