Henry waited until the graceful figure had a moment revealed its charming
outline against the lamp-lit interior, as she half turned to close the
door. Love has occasional metaphysical turns, and it was an odd feeling
that came over him as he walked away, being nothing less than a rush of
thankfulness and self-congratulation that he was not Madeline. For, if he
had been she, he would have lost the ecstasy of loving her, of
worshipping her. Ah, how much she lost, how much all those lose, who,
fated to be the incarnations of beauty, goodness, and grace, are
precluded from being their own worshippers! Well, it was a consolation
that she didn't know it, that she actually thought that, with her little
coquetries and exactions, she was enjoying the chief usufruct of her
beauty. God make up to the haughty, wilful darling in some other way for
missing the passing sweetness of the thrall she held her lovers in!

When Burr reached home, he found his sister Laura standing at the gate in
a patch of moonlight.

"How pretty you look to-night!" he said, pinching her round cheek.

The young lady merely shrugged her shoulders, and replied dryly--

"So she let you go home with her."

"How do you know that?" he asked, laughing at her shrewd guess.

"Because you're so sweet, you goosey, of course."

But, in truth, any such mode of accounting for Henry's favourable comment
on her appearance was quite unnecessary. Laura, with her petite, plump