“Why, child, this is Saturday night.  No lessons until Monday.”

She was not particularly mollified by the reiteration of the word “child,” and answered coldly: 

“There are hard lessons for every day we live.”

“Well, be good enough to hand me the letters that have arrived during my absence.”

She emptied the letter receiver, and placed several communications in his hand.  He pointed to a chair near the fire, and said quietly: 

“Sit down, my child; sit down.”

Too proud to discover how much she was piqued by his coldness, she took the seat and commenced studying.  But lines and angles swam confusedly before her, and, shutting the book, she sat looking into the fire.  While her eyes roamed into the deep, glowing crevices of the coals, a letter was hurled into the fiery mass, and in an instant blazed and shriveled to ashes.  She looked up in surprise, and started at the expression of her guardian’s face.  Its Antinous-like beauty had vanished; the pale lips writhed, displaying the faultless teeth; the thin nostrils were expanded, and the eyes burned with fierce anger.  The avalanche was upheaved by hidden volcanic fires, and he exclaimed, with scornful emphasis: 

“Idiot! blind lunatic!  In his dotage!”

There was something so marvelous in this excited, angry manifestation that Beulah, who had never before seen him other than phlegmatic, looked at him with curious wonder.  His clenched hand rested on the arm of the chair, and he continued sarcastically: 

“Oh, a precious pair of idiots!  They will have a glorious life.  Such harmony, such congeniality!  Such incomparable sweetness on her part, such equable spirits on his!  Not the surpassing repose of a windless tropic night can approach to the divine serenity of their future.  Ha! by the Furies! he will have an enviable companion; a matchless Griselda!” Laughing scornfully, he started up and strode across the floor.  As Beulah caught the withering expression which sat on every feature she shuddered involuntarily.  Could she bear to incur his contempt?  He approached her, and she felt as though her very soul shrank from him; his glowing eyes seemed to burn her face, as he paused and said ironically: 

“Can’t you participate in my joy?  I have a new brother-in-law.  Congratulate me on my sister’s marriage.  Such desperate good news can come but rarely in a lifetime.”

“Whom has she married, sir?” asked Beulah, shrinking from the iron grasp on her shoulder.

“Percy Lockhart, of course.  He will rue his madness.  I warned him.  Now let him seek apples in the orchards of Sodom!  Let him lay his parched lips to the treacherous waves of the Dead Sea!  Oh, I pity the fool!  I tried to save him, but he would seal his own doom.  Let him pay the usurious school-fees of experience.”

“Perhaps your sister’s love for him will—­”

“Oh, you young, ignorant lamb!  You poor, little, unfledged birdling!  I suppose you fancy she is really attached to him.  Do you, indeed?  About as much as that pillar of salt in the plain of Sodom was attached to the memory of Lot.  About as much as this peerless Niobe of mine is attached to me.”  He struck the marble statue as he spoke.