away from the esthetic, and held her thought in the region of moral causes; that he dwelt on the ends and purposes of life, as involving everything.  Now and then she essayed a feeble argument, or met some of his propositions with light banter.  But with a word he obliterated the sophism—­and with a glance repressed the badinage.  I think she could never before have so felt the superiority of this man, whose pure love—­almost worship—­she had put aside as a thing of light importance; and I think the interview helped him in the work upon which he had entered, that of obliterating from his heart all traces of her image.

After this interview, they did not draw together again during the evening.  Delia tried to be gay and indifferent; but he acted himself out just as he was.  I did not observe that he was more social than usual, or that he mingled more than was his wont with the young ladies present.  For most of the time, he kept, as was usual with him, in company and in conversation with his own sex.

I could not but pity Delia Floyd.  It was plain to me that she was waking up to the sad error she had committed—­an error, the consequences of which would go with her through life.  Very, very far was she from being indifferent to Wallingford—­that I could plainly see.

During the winter, Ralph came up frequently from New York to visit his bride to be.  As he was the nephew of Judge Bigelow, he and Wallingford were, as a thing of course, thrown often together during these visits.  It can hardly excite wonder, that Wallingford maintained a reserved and distant demeanor towards the young man, steadily repelling all familiarity, yet always treating him with such politeness and respect that no cause of offence could appear.  On the part of Dewey, it may be said that he saw little in the grave plodder among dusty law books and discolored parchments, that won upon his regard.  He looked upon him as a young man good enough in his way—­a very small way, in his estimation—­good enough for S——­, and small enough for a country town lawyer.  He would have put on towards him a patronizing air, and tried to excite in his mind a nobler ambition than to move in our circumscribed sphere, if something in the young man’s steady, penetrating, half-mysterious eye had not always held him back: 

“I never can talk with that young associate or yours, uncle,” he would say, now and then, to Judge Bigelow, “and I can’t just make him out.  Is he stupid, or queer?”

The Judge would smile, or laugh quietly to himself, or perhaps answer in this wise: 

“I think Henry understands himself.  Still waters, you know, run deep.”

One day in February, on the occasion of a periodical visit to S——­, young Dewey called in at Judge Bigelow’s office, and finding Wallingford alone, sat down and entered into as familiar a talk with him as was possible, considering how little they had in common.  Ralph had a purpose in view, and as soon as he saw, or thought he saw, Wallingford’s mind in the right mood, said—­