read."

"Cousin Lucian," said Lydia, "should you ever be cut off from your
politics, and disappointed in your ambition, you will have an
opportunity of living upon art and literature. Then I shall respect
your opinion of their satisfactoriness as a staff of life. As yet
you have only tried them as a sauce."

"Discontented, as usual," said Lucian.

"Your one idea respecting me, as usual," replied Lydia, patiently,
as they entered the station.

The train, consisting of three carriages and a van, was waiting at
the platform. The engine was humming subduedly, and the driver and
fireman were leaning out; the latter, a young man, eagerly watching
two gentlemen who were standing before the first-class carriage, and
the driver sharing his curiosity in an elderly, preoccupied manner.
One of the persons thus observed was a slight, fair-haired man of
about twenty-five, in the afternoon costume of a metropolitan dandy.
Lydia knew the other the moment she came upon the platform as the
Hermes of the day before, modernized by a straw hat, a
canary-colored scarf, and a suit of a minute black-and-white
chess-board pattern, with a crimson silk handkerchief overflowing
the breast pocket of the coat. His hands were unencumbered by stick
or umbrella; he carried himself smartly, balancing himself so
accurately that he seemed to have no weight; and his expression was
self-satisfied and good-humored. But--! Lydia felt that there was a
"but" somewhere--that he must be something more than a handsome,
powerful, and light-hearted young man.