"How many usually come to dinner?"

"Five or seven, sir; always an odd number. Seldom more than seven, and
never above eleven, except a state dinner to some great swell going
through."

"No ladies, of course?"

"Pardon me, sir. The Countess Vander Neeve dined here yesterday; Madam
Van Straaten, and Mrs. Cleremont--Excuse me, sir, there's Sir Roger's
bell. I must go and tell him you've arrived."

When Nixon left me, I sat for full twenty minutes, like one walking out
of a trance, and asking myself how much was real, and how much fiction,
of all around me?

My eyes wandered over the room, and from the beautiful little Gothic
clock on the mantelpiece to the gilded pineapple from which my
bed-curtains descended,--everything seemed of matchless beauty to me.
Could I ever weary of admiring them? Would they seem to me every morning
as I awoke as tasteful and as elegant as now they appeared to me? Oh,
if dear mamma could but see them! If she but knew with what honor I
was received, would not the thought go far to assuage the grief our
separation cost her? And, last of all, came the thought, if she herself
were here to live with me, to read with me, to be my companion as she
used to be,--could life offer anything to compare with such happiness?
And why should not this be? If papa really should love me, why might I
not lead him to see to whom I owed all that made me worthy of his love?

"Breakfast is served, sir, in the small breakfast-room," said a servant,
respectfully.

"You must show me where that is," said I, rising to follow him.

And now we walked along a spacious corridor, and descended a splendid
stair of white marble, with gilded banisters, and across an octagon
hall, with a pyramid of flowering plants in the centre, and into a large
gallery with armor on the walls, that I wished greatly to linger over
and examine, and then into a billiard-room, and at last into the small
breakfast-parlor, where a little table was laid out, and another servant
stood in readiness to serve me.

"Mr. Eccles, sir, will be down in a moment, if you 'll be pleased to
wait for him," said the man.

"And who is Mr. Eccles?" asked I.

"The gentleman as is to be your tutor, sir, I believe," replied he,
timidly; "and he said perhaps you 'd make the tea, sir."

"All right," said I, opening the caddy, and proceeding to make myself at
home at once. "What is here?"

"Devilled kidneys, sir; and this is fried mackerel. Mr. Eccles takes
o