“Humph!” grunted the professor, who was by no means well satisfied with the prospect, yet had reasons of his own for taking up the matter if possible.  He smoked for a while longer, and Bressant resumed his book.

“By-the-way, about this incognito of yours,” said the former at length, laying aside his pipe, and taking off his straw hat:  he had forgotten to remove it on entering, and it had been oppressing him with a sense of vague inconvenience ever since.  “What is the meaning of it?  Do you mean to keep it strict?  Is the idea you own?”

“Oh, no!  I heard nothing of it till after my father was dead.  It was Mrs. Vanderplanck—­she who wrote you the letter—­who first spoke to me of it, and said he had desired it.  I don’t know what the necessity of it is, but it must be kept a strict secret.  Should any one besides you know who I am, I stand in danger of losing my fortune.”

“Ah, ha! lose your fortune!” exclaimed the professor, frowning so portentously as to unseat his spectacles.  “How does that happen, sir?”

Bressant looked considerably amused at the old gentleman’s evident emotion; the more as he saw no occasion for it.  “I never had the curiosity to ask how,” said he, pulling at his beard.  “I shall run no risks with my fortune.  I’m satisfied to know there might be danger; there’s no difficulty in keeping silence about a name.”

Professor Valeyon rose from his chair and walked to the window.  A mighty host of gray clouds, piled thickly one upon another, and torn and tunneled by feverish wind-gusts, were hastening swiftly and silently across the sky from the west.  Beyond, where they were thickest and angriest, a yellowish, lurid tint was reflected against them.  The valley darkened like a frowning face, and the summits of the western hills were blotted out of sight.  A lightning-flash shivered brightly through the air, and then came the first growling, leaping, accumulating peal of thunder.  A sudden, rustling breath swept through the garden, and, following it, in big, quick drops, and soon in an unintermittent myriad-footed tramp, the rustling, perpendicular down-pelting of the rain.

In less than a minute, a gray, wet veil had been drawn across the farther side of the valley, hiding it from the professor’s sight.  Even the outer limits of the garden grew indistinct.  The leaves of the trees bobbed ceaselessly up and down, and glistened and dripped; the shrubs and flowers seemed to lift themselves higher from the earth, and stretch out their green fingers to the plenteous shower.  The tinkle of the fountain was quite obliterated, and the ordinarily smooth surface of the basin sprang upward in thousands of tiny pyramids, as if madly welcoming the impact of the rain-drops.  Small cataracts tore in desperate haste down the slope of the garden-paths, laying bare in their pigmy fury the lower strata of rough gravel and pebbles.  Upon the roof of the balcony was maintained an evenly sonorous monotone