This stroke of bathos brought about good-humor again, and soon our whole attention was absorbed in that magical music which to this hour electrifies me more than that of any other opera excepting “Norma.”  “Bad taste this,” connoisseurs will say; but the perfection of human enjoyment is to pursue one’s own tastes independently of Mrs. Grundy, whether musical, or literary, or artistic, according to my mode of thinking.  In all the pauses of the opera, however, I saw that handsome and agitated face, that had last caught my eye at the box-door, rise before me like a spell; and anxiety for the safety of my strange champion—­some curiosity too, mingled therewith, I do not deny, to know his name and lineage—­beset me during the whole of a sleepless night and the dreaming day that succeeded it.

We were sitting around a cheerful spring fire in the front parlor, our ordinary sitting-room, opening as this did into the dining-room beyond on one hand, and the wide intersecting hall of entrance on the other, on the opposite side of which lay the long, double-chimneyed drawing-room, less cheerful than our smaller assembly-room by half, and therefore less often used (there, you have our whole first-floor arrangement now, my reader, I believe, and I must begin over again, to catch the clew of my long sentence).  We were sitting, then, around the cheerful fire in the parlor in question, when Morton, my father’s “own man,” announced “Mr. Bainrothe and son,” and a moment afterward the two gentlemen so heralded entered the room together.  With one you are already somewhat familiar, reader mine, as a gentlemanly, handsome man, with deliberate movements and confident address.  You have seen such men in cities frequently; but the word distingue, so often too hastily bestowed, was the chief characteristic of the appearance of his younger companion.

Tall, slender, graceful, strong—­for strength alone bestows such easy perfection of movement, such equipoise of step as belonged to him—­with a fine, clear-cut face and well-shaped head, nobly placed on his straight, square shoulders—­wide for a man so slight—­dark eyed, dark haired, with a mouth somewhat concealed by a long silken mustache, then an unusual coxcombry in our republic, yet revealing in glimpses superb teeth and the curve of accurately-cut lips, Claude Bainrothe stood before me, a young Apollo.

“I have brought my son here to-night, expressly to introduce him to you, Miriam, of whom he has heard so much.”

He bowed low and silently, then tossed his curled head suddenly back again.

“We have met before, I believe, Mr. Bainrothe,” I observed, when his eye rose to meet mine.  “You were good enough to restore me my shawl and clasp last night at the opera, if I am not strangely mistaken.”

“Ah! were you that lady?” he asked, with a slight yet somewhat embarrassed laugh.  “Forgive me, if in the confusion of the moment I failed to remark your appearance.  I only knew an outrage had been committed, and naturally sought to repair it.”