ong was
the merchant's interest in witnessing what was to ensue between the
fair Polly and the gallant Feathertop that, after quitting the room, he
could by no means refrain from peeping through the crevice of the
curtain.

But there was nothing very miraculous to be seen; nothing--except the
trifles previously noticed--to confirm the idea of a supernatural peril
environing the pretty Polly. The stranger it is true was evidently a
thorough and practised man of the world, systematic and self-possessed,
and therefore the sort of a person to whom a parent ought not to
confide a simple, young girl without due watchfulness for the result.
The worthy magistrate who had been conversant with all degrees and
qualities of mankind, could not but perceive every motion and gesture
of the distinguished Feathertop came in its proper place; nothing had
been left rude or native in him; a well-digested conventionalism had
incorporated itself thoroughly with his substance and transformed him
into a work of art. Perhaps it was this peculiarity that invested him
with a species of ghastliness and awe. It is the effect of anything
completely and consummately artificial, in human shape, that the person
impresses us as an unreality and as having hardly pith enough to cast a
shadow upon the floor. As regarded Feathertop, all this resulted in a
wild, extravagant, and fantastical impression, as if his life and being
were akin to the smoke that curled upward from his pipe.

But pretty Polly Gookin felt not thus. The pair were now promenading
the room: Feathertop with his dainty stride and no less dainty grimace,
the girl with a native maidenly grace, just touched, not spoiled, by a
slightly affected manner, which seemed caught from the perfect artifice
of her companion. The longer the interview continued, the more charmed
was pretty Polly, until, within the first quarter of an hour (as the
old magistrate noted by his watch), she was evidently beginning to be
in love. Nor need it have been witchcraft that subdued her in such a
hurry; the poor child's heart, it may be, was so very fervent that it
melted her with its own warmth as reflected from the hollow semblance
of a lover. No matter what Feathertop said, his words found depth and
reverberation in her ear; no matter what he did, his action was heroic
to her eye. And by this time it is to be supposed there was a blush on
Polly's cheek, a tender smile about her mouth and a liquid softness in
her g