on after your loss," observed he, in
as kindly a tone and manner as was comportable with speaking in a very
loud key.

"Loss! I've had no loss!" returned Bressant, with a look of perplexity.
"Oh! you mean my father!" he exclaimed, suddenly, throwing his head back
with a half-smile. He very seldom laughed aloud. "There was nothing to
do. The funeral was the day before yesterday. I did all the business
before then. Yesterday I packed up, and here I am!"

"Death couldn't have been unexpected, I presume?" said the professor,
on whom Bressant's manner made an impression of resignation to his loss
rather too complete.

"The hour of death can only be a matter of guess-work at any time,"
returned the young man. "My father had been expecting to die for some
months past; but he'd been mistaken once or twice before, and I thought
he might be this time. But he happened to guess right."

"Filial way of talking, that," thought Professor Valeyon, rather taken
aback. "Didn't get that from his father; he was soft spoken enough, in
all conscience! Queer now, this matter of resemblance! there's a certain
something in his style of speaking, and in the way he looks just after
he has spoken, that reminds me of Mrs. Margaret. Deaf people are all
something alike, though; and he's been with her a great deal, I suppose.
Well, well! as to the way he spoke about his father, what looked like
indifference may have been merely embarrassment, or an attempt to
disguise feeling; or perhaps it was but a deaf man's peculiarity. At all
events, it can do no harm to suppose so."

"Were you with him during his last moments?" asked he.

"Oh, yes! I saw him die," answered Bressant, nodding, and pulling his
close-cut brown beard.

Professor Valeyon smoked for a while in silence, occasionally casting
puzzled and searching glances at the young man, who took up a book from
the table--it happened to be a volume of Celestial Mechanics--and began
to read it with great apparent interest. His face was an open and
certainly not unpleasant one; very mobile, however, and vivid in its
expressions; the eyebrows straight and delicate, and the eyes bright and
powerful. The forehead was undeniably fine, prominently and capaciously
developed. Nevertheless--and this was what puzzled the professor--there
was a very evident lack of something in the face, in no way interfering
with its intellectual aspect, but giving it, at times, an unnatural and
even uncanny look. In meeti