BERTHA. 83 



tear of feeling to leave a wrinkle on his brow. His smiles 

 were rare, but, few as they were, they never ' formed the fur- 

 rows of a future tear,' for the simple reason that he never 

 shed one. A quiet, courteous, gentlemanly bearing, the result 

 of an habitual consciousness of defined and superior posi- 

 tion in society, made him a favorite with all, while there 

 was no assumption or pretension to alarm the pride of any, 

 He had vegetated on his own domain during half his life, 

 and wandered with aimless purposes through society during 

 the other half. He was a great devourer of books, but 

 his digestive powers wpre by no means equal to his appetite. 

 The grave dignity of his deportment awakened a degree of 

 respect for him which, on closer acquaintance, was sure to be 

 diminished by the indefiniteness of his character and the vague 

 indolence of his temper. Yet there was also a provoking 

 degree of petty industry about him ; for no one was more exact 

 in all the small detail of life. Indeed he had a real Chinese 

 mind, — he saw every thing ' in little,' and, like the artificer of the 

 Celestial Empire, who carves a pagoda as delicately as a snuff- 

 box, his limited range of intellect only allowed him to elaborate 

 the minute ideas which came immediately within its scope, 

 without suffering him to take a grand and enlarged view of any 

 subject. 



Such was the person who now appeared as the lover of 

 Bertha, proffering her exactly the kind of quiet unpretending 

 attentions which were least calculated to disturb her feelings, 

 and which seemed the result of perfect taste and tact on his 

 part, while they were in fact only exponents of his really cold 



