Once more the stately house opened wide its doors to a stately gathering, and again there was music and dancing and feasting.  There were scores of richly-dressed women to kiss the bride, and there were scores of brave men to congratulate the groom; but there was not one in all that fair company had a kindly word for Hardy Gripstone, and of all the throng who feasted that night there was not one saw his broken heart.

From the hour the creaking steamer bore the happy pair to their Northern home, he slunk out of society.  The great house was closed, and the little office, dirtier and more grasping than ever, opened.  Every witness to his outburst, myself included, was studiously avoided.  I met him often; but no sign of recognition escaped him.

Some months afterward, in passing his filthy little street, I found the remorseless little door had gulped a policeman.  Pulling apart its ferocious jaws, and peering in, I saw the straight-backed chair; but the body which seemed a part of it was much stiffer and more angular.  The yellow-wash on the wall was a paltry reflex of the ghastly yellow of his faded visage; for the iron face was the face of a corpse.

Men who stood vacantly staring in muttered, “Beast!” women, shrinking from the unsightly spectacle, whispered, “Beast!” and children, gazing in silent horror with the rest, stared “Beast!” out of their wonder-stricken eyes.  So hard did they stare, so loud did they mutter, and so many instances did they rehearse of the foul wrongs he had committed, that I am doubtful about the matter myself, and ask you, reader, Was he a Beast?

LEAVES IN THE LIFE OF AN IDLER.

Leaf the First.

When a man whom you have every reason to believe not only the coolest, but the most unimpressible, of beings, suddenly turns white as a ghost and shivers with a nervous spasm, it is safe to suppose he is frightened.  But when terror, turning into rage, changes one of the most attentive and respectful of servants into a madman, it is scarcely safe to suppose anything.  As it was, I stared in mute amazement, and he glared at me as though I had struck him.  While waiting for a light, I carelessly put my hand into a basket of hot-house vegetables.  The small egg-plant I took up certainly did weigh twenty pounds, and when I attempted to lift the basket the handle bent double; but why this should frighten a man like Marcel, or provoke him to anger, is as inexplicable as it is surprising.

He is pacing up and down the hall in a state of the wildest excitement; and I, with man’s truest comfort,—­tobacco,—­am left to my meditations.

What combination of circumstances reduced him to a porter, I cannot for the life of me imagine.  His hand is as soft as a woman’s; and his brow has a breadth of brain that would dignify a Senator.  Notwithstanding the scrupulous deference in his tone, his manner possesses the quiet ease of a gentleman, to as great a degree as any I ever saw.