r when the dew is clinging. Her eyes--the opium-eaters of Stamboul
never dreamed of their peers among the bevies of hachis-houris. They
were of the very darkest hazel; one moment sleeping lazily under their
long lashes, like a river under leaves of water-lilies; the next,
sparkling like the same stream when the sunlight is splintered on its
ripples into carcanets of diamonds. When they chose to speak, not all
the orators that have rounded periods since Isocrates could match their
eloquence; when it was their will to guard a secret, they met you with
the cold, impenetrable gaze that we attribute to the mighty mother,
Cybele. Even a philosopher might have been interested--on purely
psychological grounds, of course--in watching the thoughts as they rose
one by one to the surface of those deep, clear wells (was truth at the
bottom of them?--I doubt), like the strange shapes of beauty that
reveal themselves to seamen, coyly and slowly, through the purple calm
of the Indian Sea.

Twice I have chosen a watery simile; but I know no other element
combining, as her glances did, liquid softness with lustre.

When near her, you were sensible of a strange, subtle, intoxicating
perfume, very fragrant, perfectly indefinable, which clung, not only to
her dress, but to every thing belonging to her. From what flowers it was
distilled no artist in essences alive could have told. I incline to
think that, like the "birk" in the ghost's garland,

"They were not grown on earthly bank,
Nor yet on earthly sheugh."

Guy took Miss Bellasys in to dinner, and I found myself placed on her
other side. I had been introduced to her ten minutes before, but had
little opportunity for "improving the occasion," as the Nonconformists
have it, for she never once deigned a look in my direction.

My right-hand neighbor was an elderly man of a full habit, whom it would
have been cruel to disturb till the rage of hunger was appeased, so I
was fain to seek amusement in the conversation going on on my left.
There was no indiscretion in this, for I knew Guy would never touch
secrets of state in mixed company.

For some time they talked nothing but commonplaces, evidently feeling
each other's foils. The real fencing began with a question from
Flora--if he was not surprised at seeing her there that evening.

"Not at all," was the reply; "I knew we must meet before long. It is
only parallels that don't; and there is very little of the right line
abou