e last
comer was very different. Imagine a handsome man, dressed with the
greatest care, scrupulously gloved and shod, his hair thrown back from a
forehead already unnaturally high. He had a haughty, aggressive air;
his heavy blonde moustache, much twisted at the ends, and a large, pale
face, gave him the look of a sick soldier.

Moronval presented him as "our great poet, Amaury d'Argenton, Professor
of Literature."

He, too, looked as astonished, when he caught sight of the gold pieces,
as did Dr. Hirsch and the singer Labassandre. His cold eyes had a gleam
of light, but it disappeared as he glanced from the child to his nurse.

Then he approached the other professors standing in front of the fire,
and, saluting them, listened in silence. Madame Constant thought
this Argenton looked proud; but upon Jack the man made a very strong
impression, and the child shrank from him with terror and repugnance.

Jack felt that all these men might make him wretched, but this one more
than all others. Instinctively, on seeing him enter, the child felt
him to be his future enemy, and that cold, hard glance meeting his own,
froze him to the core of his heart. How many times, in days to come, was
he to encounter those pale, blue eyes, with half-shut, heavy lids, whose
glances were cold as steel! The eyes have been called the windows of the
soul, but D'Argenton's eyes were windows so closely barred and locked,
that one had no reason to suppose that there was a soul behind them.

The conversation finished between Moronval and Constant, the principal
approached his new pupil, and giving him a little friendly tap on the
cheek, he said, "Come, come, my young friend, you must look brighter
than this."

And in fact, Jack, as the moment drew near that he must say farewell to
his mother's maid, felt his eyes swimming in tears. Not that he had any
great affection for this woman, but she was a part of his home, she saw
his mother daily, and the separation was final when she was gone.

"Constant," he whispered, catching her dress, "you will tell mamma to
come and see me."

"Certainly. She will come, of course. But don't cry."

The child was sorely tempted to burst into tears; but it seemed to him
that all these strange eyes were fixed upon him, and that the Professor
of Literature examined him with especial severity: and he controlled
himself.

The snow fell heavily. Moronval proposed to send for a carriage, but
the maid said that Augus