s on the right
hand: on the left the mysterious sea, whose music filled the fair
sunshiny world we two children were traversing hand in hand.

"There is grandpa," exclaimed Helen as we neared the summer-house;
and I saw an old man sitting in an arm-chair in the sunshine, looking
eagerly toward us as if in anxious expectation.

"You were gone a long time, Helen," he called out peevishly.

"Oh no, dear," she replied soothingly. "Here is Floyd, grandpa."

He had looked, when I first saw him from a distance, like a very old
man, but when I was shaking hands with him I was surprised to discover
that his face had little appearance of age. Even his thin dark hair
was but sprinkled with gray at the curly ends on the temples: his
eyebrows were a black silky thread, his eyes dark and full of a
peculiar glitter. His features were finely formed and feminine in
their delicacy, but the expression of his face was marred by the
restlessness of his eyes, and made almost pathetic by the dejected,
melancholy lines about his thin scarlet lips.

He shook hands with me gracefully, and made inquiries about my
journey, then sank back into his chair listlessly, and allowed Helen
to pull the tiger-skin which formed his lap-robe over his knees.
There was a peculiar feebleness about his whole attitude as he
sat--something almost abased in the sinking of his chin upon his
breast. It was hard for me to realize that he was the owner of all
this magnificence, and, dressed although he was with faultless
elegance, and although luxurious appurtenances filled the
summer-house, waiting for his momentary convenience, I was certain
that his great wealth brought him no pleasure, and that, except for
his little grandchild, he was comfortless in the world. He was full of
complaints toward her. He was sure, he said, that now when I had come
she would have no thought of him; that taking care of an old man was a
dreary and thankless task; that only the young could be beloved by the
young. And her way of listening and answering made me suspect that she
was but too used to such querulousness. I was perhaps too young to
understand mainsprings of action, yet nevertheless I seemed to know at
once that her calm, mature manner and precocious imperiousness were
the result of his weakness and wavering, of his selfish and morbid
doubts.

"You are older than I thought," Mr. Raymond said to me, regarding
me for the first time with languid curiosity. "I expected to see