heeded the transient flush of enthusiasm but little. Even the
pleasant cheery talk that pleased her father so was but
surface-deep, he knew. The woman he must conquer for his great
end lay beneath, dark and cold. It was only for that end he
cared for her. Through what cold depths of solitude her soul
breathed faintly mattered little. Yet an idle fancy touched
him, what a triumph the man had gained, whoever he might be, who
had held the master-key to a nature so rare as this, who had the
kingly power in his hand to break its silence into electric
shivers of laughter and tears,--terrible subtile pain, or joy as
terrible. Did he hold the power still? He wondered. Meanwhile
she sat there, unread.



CHAPTER II.


The evening came on, slow and cold. Life itself, the Doctor
thought, impatiently, was cool and tardy here among the hills.
Even he fell into the tranquil tone, and chafed under it.
Nowhere else did the evening gray and sombre into the mysterious
night impalpably as here. The quiet, wide and deep, folded him
in, forced his trivial heat into silence and thought. The world
seemed to think there. Quiet in the dead seas of fog, that
filled the valleys like restless vapour curdled into silence;
quiet in the listening air, stretching gray up to the stars,--in
the solemn mountains, that stood motionless, like hoary-headed
prophets, waiting with uplifted hands, day and night, to hear the
Voice, silent now for centuries; the very air, heavy with the