s not merely disagreeable, but
hateful."

"And you've been beside me, like a Christian, all this time, and I had
it!"

"The perfume is acrid; I associate it with the lower jaw of St. Basil
the Great, styled a present of immense value, you remember,--being hard,
heavy, shining like gold, the teeth yet in it, and with a smell more
delightful than amber,"--making a mock shudder at the word.

"Oh, it is prejudice, then."

"Not in the least. It is antipathy. Besides, the thing is unnatural;
there is no existent cause for it. A bit that turns up on certain
sands,--here at home, for aught I know, as often as anywhere."

"Which means Nazareth. We must teach you, Sir, that there are some
things at home as rare as those abroad."

"I am taught," he said, very low, and without looking up.

"Just tell me, what is amber?"

"Fossil gum."

"Can you say those words and not like it? Don't it bring to you a
magnificent picture of the pristine world,--great seas and other
skies,--a world of accentuated crises, that sloughed off age after age,
and rose fresher from each plunge? Don't you see, or long to see, that
mysterious magic tree out of whose pores oozed this fine solidified
sunshine? What leaf did it have? what blossom? what great wind shivered
its branches? Was it a giant on a lonely coast, or thick low growth
blistered in ravines and dells? That's the witchery of amber,--that it
_has_ no cause,--that all the world grew to produce it,--may-be died
and gave no other sign,--that its tree, which must have been beautiful,
dropped all its fruits; and how bursting with juice must they have
been"----

"Unfortunately, coniferous."

"Be quiet. Stripped itself of all its lush luxuriance, and left for a
vestige only this little fester of its gashes."

"No, again," he once more interrupted. "I have seen remnants of the wood
and bark in a museum."

"Or has it hidden and compressed all its secret here?" I continued,
obliviously. "What if in some piece of amber an accidental seed were
sealed, we found, and planted, and brought back the lost aeons? What a
glorious world that must have been, where even the gum was so precious!"

"In a picture, yes. Necessary for this. But, my dear Miss Willoughby,
you convince me that the Amber Witch founded your family," he said,
having listened with an amused face. "Loveliest amber that ever the
sorrowing sea-birds have wept," he hummed. "There! isn't that kind of
stuff enough to make a man detes