rasses and paper flowers. He gazed blankly at it in unspeakable
horror, and then paced up and down the room, wondering how he should
endure life with it continually before his eyes. Some books lay on a
side-table, and as he passed he looked absently at them and halted. On
his Shelley, slightly askew, as if to preclude all thought of care and
design, lay a little volume bound in dingy white and gold. Percival
did not touch it, but he stooped and read the title, _The Language
of Flowers_, and saw that--purely by accident of course--a leaf was
doubled down as if to mark a place. He straightened himself again, and
his proud lip curled in disgust as he glanced from the tawdry flowers
to the tawdry book. And from below came suddenly the jingling notes
of Lydia's piano and Lydia's voice--not exactly harsh and only
occasionally out of tune, but with something hopelessly vulgar in its
intonation--singing her favorite song--

Oh, if I had some one to love me,
My troubles and trials to share!

Percival turned his back on the blue vase and the little book, and
flinging himself into a chair before the fire sickened at the thought
of the life he was doomed to lead. Lydia, who was just mounting with
a little uncertainty to a high note, was a good girl in her way,
and good-looking, and had a kind sympathy for him in his evident
loneliness. But was she to be the highest type of womanhood that he
would meet henceforth? And was Bellevue street to be his world? He
glided into a mournful dream of Brackenhill, which would never be
his, and of Sissy, who had loved him so well, yet failed to love him
altogether--Sissy, who had begged for her freedom with such tender
pain in her voice while she pierced him so cruelly with her frightened
eyes. Percival looked very stern in his sadness as he sat brooding
over his fire, while from the room below came a triumphant burst of
song--

But I will marry my own love,
For true of heart am I.

Sometimes he would picture to himself the future which lay before
Horace's three-months-old child, whose little life already played so
all--important a part in his own destiny. He had questioned Hammond
about him, and Hammond had replied that he heard that Lottie and the
boy were both doing well. "They say that the child is a regular Blake,
just like Lottie herself," said Godfrey, "and doesn't look like a
Thorne at all." Percival thought, not unkindly, of Lottie's boy, of
Lottie's great clear eyes in