f spirits, and so frank!"

Doctor Chantry did not wear his disfiguring horn spectacles when Annabel
was near. He wrote a great deal of poetry while the blow of parting from
her was hanging over him, and read it to me of mornings, deprecating my
voiceless contempt. I would hear him quarreling with a servant in the
hall; for the slightest variation in his comfort engendered rages in him
that were laughable. Then he entered, red-nosed, red-eyed, and
bloodlessly shivering, with a piece of paper covered by innumerable
small characters.

"Good morning, my lad," he would say.

"Good morning, Doctor Chantry," I answered.

"Here are a few little stanzas which I have just set down. If you have
no objection I will read them."

I must have listened like a trapped bear, sitting up and longing to get
at him, for he usually finished humbly, folding his paper and putting it
away in his breast. There was reason to believe that he spent valuable
hours copying all these verses for Annabel de Chaumont. But there is no
evidence that she carried them with her when she and her governess
departed in a great coach all gilt and padding. Servants and a wagon
load of baggage and supplies accompanied De Chaumont's daughter on the
long journey to her Baltimore convent.

Shaking in every nerve and pale as a sheet, my poor master watched her
out of sight. He said he should not see his sister again until spring;
and added that he was a fool, but when a creature of light came across
his path he could not choose but worship. His affections had been
blighted by a disappointment in youth, but he had thought he might at
least bask in passing sunshine, though fated to unhappiness. I was
ashamed to look at him, or to give any sign of overhearing his weakness,
and exulted mightily in my youth, despising the enchantments of a woman.
Madame de Ferrier watched the departure from another side of the
gallery, and did not witness my poor master's breakdown. She came and
talked to him, and took more notice of him than I had ever seen her take
before.

In a day or two he was quite himself, plodding at the lessons, suddenly
furious at the servants, and giving me fretful histories of his wrongs
when brandy and water were not put by his bedside at night, or a
warming-pan was not passed between his sheets.

About this time I began to know without being taught and without
expressing it in words, that there is a natural law of environment which
makes us grow like