easant for the moment,
and had given him an idea of what the rapture would be, when, wherever
he went, the monster digit (to hint a classical phrase) of the
collective admiring public would be lifted to point him out, and the
whisper would pass from one to another, "That's him! That's Hopkins!"

Mr. Murray Bradshaw had been watching the opportunity for carrying out
his intentions, with his pleasant smile covering up all that was passing
in his mind, and Master Byles Gridley, looking equally unconcerned, had
been watching him. The young man's time came at last. Some were at the
supper-table, some were promenading, some were talking, when he managed
to get Myrtle a little apart from the rest, and led her towards one of
the recesses in the apartment, where two chairs were invitingly placed.
Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were sparkling,--the influences to
which he had trusted had not been thrown away upon her. He had no idea
of letting his purpose be seen until he was fully ready. It required all
his self-mastery to avoid betraying himself by look or tone, but he was
so natural that Myrtle was thrown wholly off her guard. He meant to
make her pleased with herself at the outset, and that not by point-blank
flattery, of which she had had more than enough of late, but rather by
suggestion and inference, so that she should find herself feeling
happy without knowing how. It would be easy to glide from that to the
impression she had produced upon him, and get the two feelings more or
less mingled in her mind. And so the simple confession he meant to
make would at length evolve itself logically, and hold by a natural
connection to the first agreeable train of thought which he had called
up. Not the way, certainly, that most young men would arrange their
great trial scene; but Murray Bradshaw was a lawyer in love as much as
in business, and considered himself as pleading a cause before a jury of
Myrtle Hazard's conflicting motives. What would any lawyer do in a jury
case but begin by giving the twelve honest men and true to understand,
in the first place, that their intelligence and virtue were conceded by
all, and that he himself had perfect confidence in them, and leave them
to shape their verdict in accordance with these propositions and his own
side of the case?

Myrtle had, perhaps, never so seriously inclined her ear to the honeyed
accents of the young pleader. He flattered her with so much tact,
that she thought she hea