was fain to be content. And presently, when he
left the house, he reeled as though he had drunk beaker after flagon of
the headiest wine.

VI.

After a ten-mile pull on the river, a shandygaff of Bass and champagne
is comforting to the oarsman. It is accounted pleasant to pay a patient
creditor an outlawed debt. But a poet has held that the most pleasurable
thing imaginable is to awake on a summer morning with the consciousness
of being in love. Even in winter the sensation ought not to be
disagreeable; yet when to the consciousness of being in love is added
the belief that the love is returned, then the bleakest day of all the
year must seem like a rose of June.

Tristrem passed the night in dreams that told of Her. He strayed through
imperishable beauties, through dawns surrounded by candors of hope. The
breath of brooks caressed him, he was enveloped in the sorceries of a
sempiternal spring. The winds, articulate with song, choired to the
skies ululations and messages of praise. Each vista held a promise. The
horizon was a prayer fulfilled. He saw grief collapse and joy enthroned.
From bird and blossom he caught the incommunicable words of love. And
when from some new witchery he at last awoke, he smiled--the real was
fairer than the dream.

For some time he loitered in the gardens which his fancy disclosed,
spectacular-wise, for his own delight, until at last he bethought him of
the new duties of his position and of the accompanying necessity of
making those duties known to those to whom he was related. Then, after a
breakfast of sliced oranges and coffee, he rang for the servant and told
him to ask his father whether he could spare a moment that morning. In a
few minutes the servant returned. "Mr. Varick will be happy to see you,
sir," he said.

"What did he say?" Tristrem asked; "what were his exact words?"

"Well, sir, I said as how you presented your compliments, and could you
see him, and he didn't say nothing; he was feeding the bird. But I could
tell, sir; when Mr. Varick doesn't like a thing, he looks at you and if
he does, he doesn't."

"And he didn't look at you?"

"No, sir, he didn't turn his 'ead."

"H'm," said Tristrem to himself, as he descended the stairs, "I wonder,
when I tell him, whether he will look at me." And the memory of his
father's stare cast a shadow on his buoyant spirits.

On entering the room in which Mr. Varick passed his mornings, Tristrem
found that gentleman se