disparity between the young sculptor's delicate
countenance and the shabby gentility of his costume. He was dressed for
a visit--a visit to a pretty woman. He was clad from head to foot in a
white linen suit, which had never been remarkable for the felicity of
its cut, and had now quite lost that crispness which garments of this
complexion can as ill spare as the back-scene of a theatre the radiance
of the footlights. He wore a vivid blue cravat, passed through a ring
altogether too splendid to be valuable; he pulled and twisted, as he
sat, a pair of yellow kid gloves; he emphasized his conversation with
great dashes and flourishes of a light, silver-tipped walking-stick,
and he kept constantly taking off and putting on one of those slouched
sombreros which are the traditional property of the Virginian or
Carolinian of romance. When this was on, he was very picturesque, in
spite of his mock elegance; and when it was off, and he sat nursing it
and turning it about and not knowing what to do with it, he could hardly
be said to be awkward. He evidently had a natural relish for brilliant
accessories, and appropriated what came to his hand. This was visible in
his talk, which abounded in the florid and sonorous. He liked words with
color in them.

Rowland, who was but a moderate talker, sat by in silence, while
Cecilia, who had told him that she desired his opinion upon her friend,
used a good deal of characteristic finesse in leading the young man to
expose himself. She perfectly succeeded, and Hudson rattled away for
an hour with a volubility in which boyish unconsciousness and manly
shrewdness were singularly combined. He gave his opinion on twenty
topics, he opened up an endless budget of local gossip, he described
his repulsive routine at the office of Messrs. Striker and Spooner,
counselors at law, and he gave with great felicity and gusto an account
of the annual boat-race between Harvard and Yale, which he had lately
witnessed at Worcester. He had looked at the straining oarsmen and the
swaying crowd with the eye of the sculptor. Rowland was a good deal
amused and not a little interested. Whenever Hudson uttered some
peculiarly striking piece of youthful grandiloquence, Cecilia broke into
a long, light, familiar laugh.

"What are you laughing at?" the young man then demanded. "Have I said
anything so ridiculous?"

"Go on, go on," Cecilia replied. "You are too delicious! Show Mr. Mallet
how Mr. Striker read the Dec