She would sit for hours in the same position, apparently
never wearied of her silence, her placid expression never changing save
into a gentle smile when she saw anything that pleased her.

They reached England at last, and Madame Patoff was installed in her
brother-in-law's house in the country. Cutter came frequently from town
to see her, and always studied her case with new interest; but after a
whole year he could detect no change whatever in her condition, and
began to despair of ever classifying her malady in the scientific
catalogue of his mind.

* * * * *

It was at this point, my dear friend, that I became an actor in the
story of Paul Patoff and his mother, and I will now for a time tell my
tale in my own person,--in the prosaic person of Paul Griggs, with whom
you are so well acquainted that you are good enough to call him your
friend. To give you at once an idea of my own connection with this
history, I will confess that it was I who dropped the rope out of the
window at Weissenstein, as you may have already guessed from the
description I have given of myself.

VI.

Mankind may be divided and classified in many ways, according to the
tests applied, and the reason why any new classification of people is
always striking is not far to seek. For, since all the mental and moral
qualities of which we have ever heard belong to men and women, it is
obviously easy to say that we can divide our fellow-creatures into two
classes, one class possessing the vice or virtue in point, and the other
not possessing it. The only division which is hard to make is that which
should separate the human race into classes of good and bad,--to speak
biblically, the division of the sheep from the goats; but as no one has
ever been able to draw the line, some people have said, in their haste,
that all men are bad, while others have arrived at the no less hasty and
equally false conclusion that all men are good. The Preacher was nearer
the truth when he said, "All is vanity," than was David when he said in
his heart, "All men are liars;" for if the bad man is foolish enough to
boast of his error, the good man is generally inclined to vaunt his
virtue after the most mature reflection, and the secret of success,
whether in good or in evil, is not to allow the right hand to know the
doings of the left. There are men who give lavishly with the one hand,
while they steal even more freely with the ot