that did not wholly resemble a sob and yet was not like to
laughter, his mouth twitched, and he turned his head aside. "It's the
first time since your mother died," he said at last, but what he meant
by that absurd remark, who shall say?

For some time Tristrem lingered, lost in thought. It was indeed as he
had said. He was gladder to feel again that he was free to love and free
to be loved in return than he would have been at holding all New York in
fee. As he rose from the nightmare in which he suffocated he did not so
much as pay the lost estate the compliment of a regret. It was not that
which had debarred him from her, nor was it for that that she had once
placed her hand in his. He was well rid of it all, since in the riddance
the doors of his prison-house were unlocked. For three months his heart
had been not dead but haunted, and now it was instinct with life and
fluttered by the beckonings of hope. He had fronted sorrow. Pain had
claimed him for its own, and in its intensity it had absorbed his tears.
He had sunk to the uttermost depths of grief, and, unbereft of reason,
he had explored the horrors of the abyss. And now in the magic of the
unforeseen he was transported to dazzling altitudes, to landscapes from
which happiness, like the despot that it is, had routed sorrow and
banished pain. He was like one who, overtaken by years and disease,
suddenly finds his youth restored.

His plans were quickly made. He would go to Narragansett at once, and
not leave until the engagement was renewed. He had even the cruelty to
determine that his grandfather should come to the Pier himself, and
argue with Mrs. Raritan, if argument were necessary.

"I have so much to say," he presently exclaimed, "that I don't know
where to begin."

"Begin at the end," his grandfather suggested.

But Tristrem found it more convenient to begin in the middle. He led the
old gentleman into the rhyme and reason of the rupture, he carried him
forward and backward from old fancies to newer hopes. He explained how
imperative it was that with the demolition of the obstacle which his
father had erected the engagement should be at once renewed; he blamed
himself for having even suggested that Viola was capricious; he mourned
over the position in which she had been placed; he pictured Mrs.
Raritan's relief when she learned of the error into which she had
wandered; and after countless digressions wound up by commanding his
grandfather to write an