“Then you want to see the Christian religion trampled under foot,” said Evelyn, spitefully, fixing her eyes on mine.

The blood rose hotly to my temples.  “No, no, indeed!  You know I do not, Evelyn, for it is mine; but Christ died for all, Jew as well as Gentile.  Through him let us hope for change and mercy and peace on earth.  When infinite harmony prevails, the Hebrew race will find its appointed place and level again, through one great principle.”

“My idea is, that it has found its appointed place and level, and will abide there.—­But to digress, when do you expect your son, Mr. Bainrothe?”

I have anticipated by many years in giving this snatch of conversation here.  Let us go back to the time of my father’s marriage, and to affairs as they stood then, for precious are the unities.

I need not drop Mr. Bainrothe, however, and it was of him, our left-hand neighbor, so intimately connected with our destiny, one and all, that I was about to speak when the digression occurred which led me from the high-road of my story.

Our “sinister neighbor,” as my father laughingly called him sometimes with unconscious truth, in reference to his left-hand adjacency, was a handsome and gentlemanly-looking man of no very particular age, or rather in his appearance there was no criterion for decision on this subject.  His form was as slender and elastic, his step as light, his teeth, hair, and complexion, as unexceptionable as though he had been twenty-five; nor were there any of those signs and symptoms about him by which the weather-wise usually measure experience and length of days.

If care had come nigh him at all, it had swept as lightly past him as time itself.  His address was invariably urbane, self-possessed, well-bred; his voice was pleasant, his smile rather brilliant, though it never reached his eyes, except when he sneered, which was rarely and terribly.

They glittered then with a strange cold light, those variegated orbs, but their ordinary expression was earnest and investigatory.  They were well-cut eyes, moreover, of a yellowish-brown color, and I used to remark as a little child—­for children observe the minutiae of personal peculiarities much more closely than their elders—­that the iris of both orbs was speckled with green and golden spots, which seemed to mix and dilate occasionally, and gave them a decidedly kaleidoscopic effect.

His skin was clear and even florid, and his lips had the peculiarity of turning suddenly white, or rather livid, without any evident cause.  This my father thought betokened disease of the heart, but I learned later to know it was the only manifestation of suppressed feeling which the habit of his life could not overcome, and that proved him still mortal and fallible.