“I rather think I shall not repeat the experiment; especially as my arguments seem to have failed signally in their design.  Are you quite sure that you understand my review perfectly?”

He looked a little curious—­she fancied disappointed—­and she replied laughingly: 

“Oh, I think I do; it is not so very abstruse.”

He leaned forward, took the paper from her, before she was aware of his intention, and threw it into the fire.

She looked surprised, and he offered his hand once more.

“Are we still friends?  Will you shake hands with your reviewer?”

She unhesitatingly put her hand in his, and answered: 

“Friendship is not a gossamer thread, to be severed by a stroke of the pen.”

She endeavored to withdraw her fingers, but he held them firmly, while his blue eyes rested upon her with an expression she by no means liked.  Her black brows met in a heavy frown, and her lips parted angrily.  He saw it, and instantly released her hand.

“Miss Beulah, my uncle commissioned me to say to you that he received a letter to-day from Dr. Hartwell.  It was written during his voyage down the Red Sea, and contained a long farewell, as inland travel would afford no facilities for writing.”

He noted the tight clasp in which her fingers locked each other, and the livid paleness of her lips and brow, as the long lashes drooped and she sat silently listening.  Charon laid his head on her knee and looked up at her.  There was a brief silence, and Mr. Lindsay added slowly: 

“My uncle fears he will never return.  Do you cherish the hope?”

“Yes; he will come back, if his life is spared.  It may be many years; but he will come, he will come.”

Their eyes met; there was a long, searching look from Mr. Lindsay; she did not shrink from the scrutiny.  An expression of keen sorrow swept over his face, but he conquered his emotion, took the parcel he had brought, and, unwrapping a book, said, in his usual quiet tone: 

“When I saw you last you were regretting your inability to procure Sir William Hamilton’s ‘Philosophy of the Conditioned,’ and I have taken the liberty of bringing you my own copy.  Read it at your leisure; I shall not need it again soon.  I do not offer it as a system which will satisfy your mind, by solving all your problems; but I do most earnestly commend his ‘Philosophy of the Conditioned,’ as the surest antidote to the abstractions in which your speculation has involved you.  The most erudite scholar of the age, and one of the finest metaphysical minds the world has ever known, he expressly sums up his vast philosophic researches with the humble confession:  ’There are two sorts of ignorances; we philosophize to escape ignorance, and the consummation of our philosophy is ignorance; we start from the one, we repose in the other; they are the goals from which, and to which, we tend; and the pursuit of knowledge is but a course