So they talked at the Judge’s, in the calm, judicial-looking mansion-house, in the grave, still library, with the troops of wan-hued law-books staring blindly out of their titles at them as they talked, like the ghosts of dead attorneys fixed motionless and speechless, each with a thin, golden film over his unwinking eyes.

In the mean time, everything went on quietly enough after Cousin Richard’s return.  A man of sense,—­that is, a man who knows perfectly well that a cool head is worth a dozen warm hearts in carrying the fortress of a woman’s affections, (not yours, “Astarte,” nor yours, “Viola,")—­who knows that men are rejected by women every day because they, the men, love them, and are accepted every day because they do not, and therefore can study the arts of pleasing,—­a man of sense, when he finds he has established his second parallel too soon, retires quietly to his first, and begins working on his covered ways again.  The whole art of love may be read in any Encyclopaedia under the title Fortification, where the terms just used are explained.  After the little adventure of the necklace, Dick retreated at once to his first parallel.  Elsie loved riding,—­and would go off with him on a gallop now and then.  He was a master of all those strange Indian horseback-feats which shame the tricks of the circus-riders, and used to astonish and almost amuse her sometimes by disappearing from his saddle, like a phantom horseman lying flat against the side of the bounding creature that bore him, as if he were a hunting leopard with his claws in the horse’s flank and flattening himself out against his heaving ribs.  Elsie knew a little Spanish too, which she had learned from the young person who had taught her dancing, and Dick enlarged her vocabulary with a few soft phrases, and would sing her a song sometimes, touching the air upon an ancient-looking guitar they had found with the ghostly things in the garret,—­a quaint old instrument, marked E. M. on the back, and supposed to have belonged to a certain Elizabeth Mascarene, before mentioned in connection with a work of art,—­a fair, dowerless lady, who smiled and sung and faded away, unwedded, a hundred years ago, as dowerless ladies, not a few, are smiling and singing and fading now,—­God grant each of them His love,—­and one human heart as its interpreter!

As for school, Elsie went or stayed away as she liked.  Sometimes, when they thought she was at her desk in the great schoolroom, she would be on The Mountain,—­alone always.  Dick wanted to go with her, but she would never let him.  Once, when she had followed the zigzag path a little way up, she looked back and caught a glimpse of him following her.  She turned and passed him without a word, but giving him a look which seemed to make the scars on his wrist tingle, went to her room, where she locked herself up, and did not come out again till evening, Old Sophy having brought her food, and set it down, not speaking, but