t; Patrick's linen
was prepared for him properly studded; he had only to spring out of one
suit into another; and still more fortunately the urgency for a rapid
execution of the manoeuvre prevented his noticing a large square envelope
posted against the looking-glass of his toilette-table. He caught sight
of it first when pulling down his shirt-cuffs with an air of recovered
ease, not to say genial triumph, to think that the feat of grooming
himself, washing, dressing and stripping, the accustomed persuasive final
sweep of the brush to his hair-crop, was done before the bell had rung.
His name was on the envelope; and under his name, in smaller letters,

Adiante.

'Shall I?' said he, doing the thing he asked himself about doing tearing
open the paper cover of the portrait of her who had flitted in his head
for years unseen. And there she was, remote but present.

His underlip dropped; he had the look of those who bate breath and swarm
their wits to catch a sound. At last he remembered that the summoning
bell had been in his ears a long time back, without his having been
sensible of any meaning in it. He started to and fro. The treasure he
held declined to enter the breast-pocket of his coat, and the other
pockets he perhaps, if sentimentally, justly discarded as being beneath
the honour of serving for a temporary casket. He locked it up, with a vow
to come early to rest. Even then he had thoughts whether it might be
safe.

Who spoke, and what they uttered at the repast, and his own remarks, he
was unaware of. He turned right and left a brilliant countenance that had
the glitter of frost-light; it sparkled and was unreceptive. No wonder
Miss Adister deemed him wilder and stranger than ever. She necessarily
supposed the excess of his peculiarities to be an effect of the portrait,
and would have had him, according to her ideas of a young man of some
depth of feeling, dreamier. On the contrary, he talked sheer commonplace.
He had ridden to the spur of the mountains, and had put up the mare, and
groomed and fed her, not permitting another hand to touch her: all very
well, and his praises of the mare likewise, but he had not a syllable for
the sublime of the mountains. He might have careered over midland flats
for any susceptibility that he betrayed to the grandeur of the scenery
she loved. Ultimately she fancied the miniature had been overlooked in
his hurry to dress, and that he was now merely excited by his lively
gall