whatever charm it infringed upon was repaired by another,
perhaps more precious. She was not so constantly gay, but had her
moods of thought, which Clifford, on the whole, liked better than her
former phase of unmingled cheerfulness; because now she understood him
better and more delicately, and sometimes even interpreted him to
himself. Her eyes looked larger, and darker, and deeper; so deep, at
some silent moments, that they seemed like Artesian wells, down, down,
into the infinite. She was less girlish than when we first beheld her
alighting from the omnibus; less girlish, but more a woman.

The only youthful mind with which Phoebe had an opportunity of frequent
intercourse was that of the daguerreotypist. Inevitably, by the
pressure of the seclusion about them, they had been brought into habits
of some familiarity. Had they met under different circumstances,
neither of these young persons would have been likely to bestow much
thought upon the other, unless, indeed, their extreme dissimilarity
should have proved a principle of mutual attraction. Both, it is true,
were characters proper to New England life, and possessing a common
ground, therefore, in their more external developments; but as unlike,
in their respective interiors, as if their native climes had been at
world-wide distance. During the early part of their acquaintance,
Phoebe had held back rather more than was customary with her frank and
simple manners from Holgrave's not very marked advances. Nor was she
yet satisfied that she knew him well, although they almost daily met
and talked together, in a kind, friendly, and what seemed to be a
familiar way.

The artist, in a desultory manner, had imparted to Phoebe something of
his history. Young as he was, and had his career terminated at the
point already attained, there had been enough of incident to fill, very
creditably, an autobiographic volume. A romance on the plan of Gil
Blas, adapted to American society and manners, would cease to be a
romance. The experience of many individuals among us, who think it
hardly worth the telling, would equal the vicissitudes of the
Spaniard's earlier life; while their ultimate success, or the point
whither they tend, may be incomparably higher than any that a novelist
would imagine for his hero. Holgrave, as he told Phoebe somewhat
proudly, could not boast of his origin, unless as being exceedingly
humble, nor of his education, except that it had been the