“O Mr. Herder! —­ did you kill him!” exclaimed Rose.

“Not at all —­ I did not kill him —­ he was very good friend of mine, —­ he was not angry wiz me.  He said, ’when I get well, Herder, you come to breakfast wiz me in my room;’ and I said, ‘yes!’”

“Is that kind of thing permitted in the Universities, Mr. Herder?” said Elizabeth.

“Permit? —­ No, it is not permitted.  They would hinder it if they could.”

“What would have been done to you if you had been found out?”

“Humph! —­ They would have shut us up!” said Mr. Herder, shrugging his shoulders.

“In your rooms?”

“No —­ not exactly; —­ in the fortress.  At Munich the punishment for being found out, is eight years in the fortress; —­ at ozer places, four or five years; —­ yet they will fight.”

“How many Universities have you been in, Mr. Herder?” said Rose.

“I have been in seven, of Universites in Europe.”

“Fighting duels in all of them!”

“Well, yes; —­ no, there was one where I did fight no duel.  I was not there long enough.”

“Mr. Herder, I am shocked!  I wouldn’t have thought it of you.”

“The bracelet, Mr. Herder, I believe is yours,” said Rufus.

“Mine?” —­ said the naturalist.

“Miss Elizabeth would allow no one to put it on her hand, but a philosopher.”

“That is too great an honour for me, —­ I am not young and gallant enough —­ I shall depute you,” —­ said Mr. Herder putting the cameo in Winthrop’s hand.

But Winthrop remarked that he could not take deputed honours; and quietly laid it in the hand of its owner.  Elizabeth, with a face a little blank, clasped it on for herself.  Rufus looked somewhat curious and somewhat amused.

“I am afraid you will say of my brother, Miss Haye, that though certainly young enough, he is not very gallant,” he said.

Elizabeth gave no answer to this speech, nor sign of hearing, unless it might be gathered from the cool free air with which she made her way out of the group and left them at the window.  She joined herself to President Darcy, at the other side of the fire, and engaged him in talk with her about different gems and the engraving of them, so earnestly that she had no eyes nor ears for anybody else.  And when any of the gentlemen brought her refreshments, she took or refused them almost without acknowledgment, and always without lifting her eyes to see to whom it might be due.

The company were all gone, and a little pause, of rest or of musing, had followed the last spoken ‘good night.’  It was musing on Elizabeth’s part; for she broke it with,

“Father, if you can give Mr. Landholm aid in any way, I hope you will.”

“My dear,” said her father, “I don’t know what I can do.  I did offer to set him a going in business, but he don’t like my line; and I have nothing to do with his, away up in the North there among the mountains.”