ght to have a bullet through his head for his pains" (_sotto
voce_).

This stroke of bathos brought about good-humor again, and soon our whole
attention was absorbed in that magical music which to this hour
electrifies me more than that of any other opera excepting "Norma." "Bad
taste this," connoisseurs will say; but the perfection of human
enjoyment is to pursue one's own tastes independently of Mrs. Grundy,
whether musical, or literary, or artistic, according to my mode of
thinking. In all the pauses of the opera, however, I saw that handsome
and agitated face, that had last caught my eye at the box-door, rise
before me like a spell; and anxiety for the safety of my strange
champion--some curiosity too, mingled therewith, I do not deny, to know
his name and lineage--beset me during the whole of a sleepless night and
the dreaming day that succeeded it.

We were sitting around a cheerful spring fire in the front parlor, our
ordinary sitting-room, opening as this did into the dining-room beyond
on one hand, and the wide intersecting hall of entrance on the other, on
the opposite side of which lay the long, double-chimneyed drawing-room,
less cheerful than our smaller assembly-room by half, and therefore less
often used (there, you have our whole first-floor arrangement now, my
reader, I believe, and I must begin over again, to catch the clew of my
long sentence). We were sitting, then, around the cheerful fire in the
parlor in question, when Morton, my father's "own man," announced "Mr.
Bainrothe and son," and a moment afterward the two gentlemen so heralded
entered the room together. With one you are already somewhat familiar,
reader mine, as a gentlemanly, handsome man, with deliberate movements
and confident address. You have seen such men in cities frequently; but
the word _distingue_, so often too hastily bestowed, was the chief
characteristic of the appearance of his younger companion.

Tall, slender, graceful, strong--for strength alone bestows such easy
perfection of movement, such equipoise of step as belonged to him--with
a fine, clear-cut face and well-shaped head, nobly placed on his
straight, square shoulders--wide for a man so slight--dark eyed, dark
haired, with a mouth somewhat concealed by a long silken mustache, then
an unusual coxcombry in our republic, yet revealing in glimpses superb
teeth and the curve of accurately-cut lips, Claude Bainrothe stood
before me, a young Apollo.

"I have brought my