timidity."

"They must be very ill off for a pastime, then. I used to think Mark
Lyle bad enough, but his is a blushing bash-fulness compared to yours."

"You only see me in my struggle to overcome a natural defect. Miss
Graham,--just as a coward assumes the bully to conceal his poltroonery;
you regard in me the mock audacity that strives to shroud a most painful
modesty."

She looked full at him for an instant, and then burst into a loud and
joyful fit of laughter, in which he joined without the faintest show of
displeasure. "Well, I believe you are good-tempered," said she, frankly.

"The best in the world; I am very seldom angry; I never bear malice."

"Have you any other good qualities?" asked she, with a slight mockery in
her voice.

"Yes,--many; I am trustful to the verge of credulity; I am generous
to the limits of extravagance; I am unswerving in my friendships, and
without the taint of a selfishness in all my nature."

"How nice that is, or how nice it must be!"

"I could grow eloquent over my gifts, if it were not that my bashfulness
might embarrass me."

"Have you any faults?"

"I don't think so; at least I can't recall any."

"Nor failings?"

"Failings! perhaps," said he, dubiously; "but they are, after all, mere
weaknesses,--such as a liking for splendor, a love of luxury generally,
a taste for profusion, a sort of regal profusion in daily life, which
occasionally jars with my circumstances, making me--not irritable, I am
never irritable--but low-spirited and depressed."

"Then, from what you have told me, I think I'd better say to Mrs. Butler
that there 's an angel waiting outside who is most anxious to make her
acquaintance."

"Do so; and add that he 'll fold his wings, and sit on this stone till
you come to fetch him."

"_Au revoir_, Gabriel, then," said she, passing in at the wicket, and
taking her way through the little garden.

Maitland sat discussing in his own mind the problem how far Alcibiades
was right or wrong in endeavoring to divert the world from any criticism
of himself by a certain alteration in his dog's tail, rather opining
that, in our day at least, the wiser course would have been to avoid all
comment whatsoever,--the imputation of an eccentricity being only second
to the accusation of a crime. With the Greeks of that day the false
scent was probably a success; with the English of ours, the real wisdom
is not to be hunted. "Oh, if it were all to be done again, how ve