Such had been his splendid “castle in the air.”  But now the thunderbolt had fallen and his castle was in ruins.

Claudia, whom he had believed to be, if not perfectly faultless, yet the purest, noblest, and proudest among women; Claudia, his queen, had been capable of selling herself to be the wife of an unloved man, for the price of a title and a coronet—­a breath and a bauble!

Claudia had struck a fatal blow, not only to his love for her, but to his honor of her; and both love and honor were in their death-throes!

Anguish is no computer of time.  He might have sat there half an hour or half a day, he could not have told which, when he heard the voice of his kind friend calling him.

“Ishmael, Ishmael, my lad, where are you, boy?  Come to me!”

“Yes, yes, sir, I am coming,” he answered mechanically.

And like one who has fainted from torture, and recovered in bewilderment, he arose and walked down to the study.

Some blind instinct led him straight to the chair that was sitting with its back to the window; into this he sank, with his face in the deep shadow.

Judge Merlin was walking up and down the floor, with signs of disturbance in his looks and manners.

A waiter with decanters of brandy and wine, and some glasses, stood upon the table.  This was a very unusual thing.

“Well, Ishmael, it is done! my girl is to be a viscountess; but I do not like it; no, I do not like it!”

Ishmael was incapable of reply; but the judge continued: 

“It is not only that I shall lose her; utterly lose her, for her home will be in another hemisphere, and the ocean will roll between me and my sole child,—­it is not altogether that,—­but, Ishmael, I don’t like the fellow; and I never did, and never can!”

Here the judge paused, poured out a glass if wine, drank it, and resumed: 

“And I do not know why I don’t like him! that is the worst of it!  His rank is, of course, unexceptionable, and indeed much higher than a plain republican like myself has a right to expect in a son-in-law!  And his character appears to be unquestionable!  He is good-looking, well-behaved, intelligent and well educated young fellow enough, and so I do not know why it is that I don’t like him!  But I don’t like him, and that is all about it!”

The judge sighed, ran his hands through his gray hair, and continued: 

“If I had any reason for this dislike; if I could find any just cause of offense in him; if I could put my hand down on any fault of his character, I could then say to my daughter:  ’I object to this man for your husband upon this account,’ and then I know she would not marry him in direct opposition to my wishes.  But, you see, I cannot do anything like this, and my objection to the marriage, if I should express it, would appear to be caprice, prejudice, injustice—­”

He sighed again, walked several times up and down the floor in silence, and then once more resumed his monologue: