hose feminine graces that adorned the first woman in
Paradise, he had also lavished on her a heart whose crystalline purity
was never clouded, and whose generosity burst forth with every emotion
like a limpid spring.

But in all his interviews, Gustave had never yet been alone with Lenora.
When he visited her she never left the apartment where she commonly sat
with her father, unless the old gentleman expressed a wish that they
should unite in a walk through the garden; and, of course, he had never
enjoyed an opportunity to breathe the love that was rising to his lips.
Still, he felt that it was altogether useless to express by words what
was passing in their hearts; for the kindness, the respect, the
affection, that shone in everybody's eyes, betokened the feeling which
united them in a mingled sentiment of attachment and hope.

Though Gustave entertained profound veneration for Lenora's father and
really loved him as a son, there was something which at times came like
a cloud betwixt himself and the old gentleman. What he heard outside of
Grinselhof of De Vlierbeck's extraordinary avarice had been fully
realized since he became intimate at the house. No one ever offered him
a glass of wine or beer; he never received an invitation to dinner or
supper; and he frequently observed the trouble that was taken by the
master of the house to disguise his inhospitable economy.

Avarice is a passion which excites no other emotion than that of
aversion or contempt, because it is natural to believe that when so
degrading a vice takes possession of one's soul it destroys every spark
of generosity and fills it with meanness. Accordingly, Gustave had a
long and fearful conflict with himself in order to subdue this
instinctive feeling and to convince his judgment that De Vlierbeck's
conduct was only a caprice which did not detract from the native dignity
of his character. And yet, had the young man known the truth, he would
have seen that a pang was hidden beneath every smile that flitted over
the old man's face, and that the nervous shudders which at times shook
his frame were the results of a suppressed agony that almost destroyed
him. As he gazed on the happy face of Lenora and steeped his soul in the
intoxication of her love, he never dreamed that her father's life was a
prolonged punishment; that, day and night, a terrible future opened its
vista before him; and that each moment of his existence brought him
nearer and nearer to