acon's manner and voice.

"_Plus ca change, plus la meme chose_," he quoted gleefully. "What a
consummate fraud the dear old governor is; and how deliciously innocent
of the fact, that he imposes upon no one half so successfully as he does
upon himself!"

Our young man also found time, from afar, to admire Damaris; but, let it
be added, to a very different tune. Her beauty came as surprise to him
as having much more than fulfilled its early promise. He found it
impressive beyond that of any one of the many ladies, mature or callow,
with whom it was his habit largely to flirt. So far he could
congratulate himself on having successfully withstood the wiles of
matrimony--but by how near a shave, at times by how narrow a squeak! If
that fine parental fraud, the Archdeacon, had but known!--Tom,
undeterred by the solemnity of the occasion, hunched up his shoulders
like a naughty boy expecting his ears boxed.--But then--thank the
powers, the Archdeacon so blessedly and refreshingly didn't, and, what
was more, didn't in the very least want to know. He never asked for
trouble; but, like the priest and Levite of sacred parable, carefully
passed by on the other side when trouble was about.

Our young friend looked again at Damaris. Yes--she had beauty and in the
grand manner, standing there at the foot of the open brick-lined grave,
calm, immobile, black-clad, white-faced, in the encircling melancholy of
the drizzling mist. With the family grouped about her, large-boned,
pompous, well-fed persons, impervious to general ideas as they were
imperviously prosperous, he compared her to a strayed deer amongst a
herd of store cattle. Really, with the exception of his cousin Felicia
and--naturally--of himself, the Verity breed was almost indecently true
to type. Prize animals, most of them, he granted, still cattle--for
didn't he detect an underlying trace of obstinate bovine ferocity in
their collective aspect?

Damaris' calm and immobility exceeded theirs. But in quality and source
how far removed, how sensitive and intelligent! Her mourning was in the
grand manner, too, her grief sincere and absolute to the extent of a
splendid self-forgetfulness. She didn't need to pose; for that forgotten
self could be trusted--in another acceptation of the phrase--never to
forget itself.

And here Tom Verity's agreeable frivolity, the astute and witty
shiftiness of mind and--in a degree--of practice, for which he so readily
found excuses and f