three
large windows, was the principal drawing-room. Here, now, at a small
writing-table, sat a young girl, whose white dress admirably set off the
graceful outline of her figure, seen within the half-darkened room; her
features were pale, but beautifully regular, and the masses of her hair,
black as night, which she wore twisted on the back of the head, like a
cameo, gave a character of classic elegance and simplicity to the whole.

[Illustration: 181]

Without, and under the veranda, an old man, tall, and slightly bowed
in the shoulders, walked slowly up and down. It needed not the careful
nicety of his long queue., the spotless whiteness of his cambric shirt
and vest, nor the perfection of his nicely fitting nankeen pantaloons,
to bespeak him a gentleman of the past day. There was a certain _suave_
gentleness in his bland look, an air of easy courtesy in his every
motion, a kind of well-bred mannerism in the very carriage of his
gold-headed cane, that told of a time when the graces of deportment were
a study, and when our modern careless freedom had been deemed the very
acme of rudeness. He was dictating, as was his wont each morning, some
reminiscence of his early life, when he had served in the Body-Guard of
Louis XVI., and where he had borne his part in the stormy scenes of that
eventful era. The memory of that most benevolent monarch, the
fascinations of that queen whom to serve was to idolize, had sufficed to
soften the hardships of a life which, from year to year, pressed more
heavily, and were at last, after many a straggle, impressing their lines
upon a brow where age alone had never written grief.

On the morning in question, instead of rapidly pouring forth his
recollections, which usually came in groups, pressing one upon the
other, he hesitated often, sometimes forgetting "where he was," in his
narrative, and more than once ceasing to speak altogether; he walked in
revery, and seeming deeply preoccupied.

His granddaughter had noticed this change; but cautiously abstaining
from anything that might betray her consciousness, she sat, pen in hand,
waiting, her lustrous eyes watching each gesture with an intensity of
interest that amounted to actual suffering.

"I fear, Mary," said he, with an effort to smile, "we must give it up
for to-day. The present is too strong for the past, just as sorrow is
always an overmatch for joy. Watching for the post has routed all my
thoughts, and I can think of nothing