e of reading was wider than
the Frenchman's, and his scholarship more accurate; but the Frenchman
had a compact neatness of expression, a light and nimble grace,
whether in the advancing or the retreat of his argument, which covered
deficiencies, and often made them appear like merits. Graham was
compelled, indeed, to relinquish many of the forces of superior
knowledge or graver eloquence, which with less lively antagonists he
could have brought into the field, for the witty sarcasm of Savarin
would have turned them aside as pedantry or declamation. But though
Graham was neither dry nor diffuse, and the happiness at his
heart brought out the gayety of humour which had been his early
characteristic, and yet rendered his familiar intercourse genial
and playful, still there was this distinction between his humour and
Savarin's wit,--that in the first there was always something earnest, in
the last always something mocking. And in criticism Graham seemed ever
anxious to bring out a latent beauty, even in writers comparatively
neglected; Savarin was acutest when dragging forth a blemish never
before discovered in writers universally read.

Graham did not perhaps notice the profound attention with which
Isaura listened to him in these intellectual skirmishes with the more
glittering Parisian. There was this distinction she made between him
and Savarin,--when the last spoke she often chimed in with some happy
sentiment of her own; but she never interrupted Graham, never intimated
a dissent from his theories of art, or the deductions he drew from them;
and she would remain silent and thoughtful for some minutes when his
voice ceased. There was passing from his mind into hers an ambition
which she imagined, poor girl, that he would be pleased to think he had
inspired, and which might become a new bond of sympathy between them.
But as yet the ambition was vague and timid,--an idea or a dream to be
fulfilled in some indefinite future.

The last night of this short-lived holiday-time, the party, after
staying out on the lake to a later hour than usual, stood lingering
still on the lawn of the villa; and their host, who was rather addicted
to superficial studies of the positive sciences, including, of course,
the most popular of all, astronomy, kept his guests politely listening
to speculative conjectures on the probable size of the inhabitants of
Sirius, that very distant and very gigantic inhabitant of heaven who
has led philoso