And never were rooms kept in more perfect order. And, best of all, love taught the professor the mystic art of dusting without deranging papers and dementing their owner.
Ishmael's present position was certainly a very pleasant one. He not only found a real home in his boarding-house, and a faithful friend in his servant, but a pair of aunties in his landladies. Every good heart brought in contact with Ishmael Worth was sure to love him. And these old ladies were no exception to the rule. They had no relatives to bestow their affections upon, and so, seeing every day more of their young lodger's worth, they grew to love him with maternal ardor. It is not too much to say that they doted on him. And in private they nodded their heads at each other and talked of its being time to make their wills, and spoke of young Mr. Worth as their heir and executor.
Ishmael for his part treated the old ladies with all the reverential tenderness that their age and womanhood had a right to expect from his youth and manhood. He never dreamed that the "sweet, small courtesies," which it was his happiness to bestow alike on rich and poor, had won for him such signal favor in the eyes of the old ladies. He knew and was happy to know that they loved him. That was all. He never dreamed of being their heir; he never even imagined that they had any property to bequeath. He devoted himself with conscientious zeal to his profession, and went on, as he deserved to go on, from success to success.
CHAPTER XIII.
LADY VINCENT'S RECEPTION.
The folds of her wine-dark violet dress
Glow over the sofa fall on fall.
As she sits in the light of her loveliness,
With a smile for each and for all.
Could we find out her heart through that velvet and lace,
Can it beat without rumpling her sumptuous dress?
She will show us her shoulder, her bosom, her face,
But what her heart's like, we must guess.
—O. M.
The evening of Lady Vincent's reception arrived. At an unfashionably early hour Judge Merlin's country house was filled.
All the county families of any importance were represented there.
The rustic guests, drawn, no doubt, not more by their regard for
Judge Merlin and his daughter than by their curiosity to behold a
titled foreigner.
Mr. and Mrs. Middleton and Beatrice came very early, encumbered with several bandboxes; for their long ride made it necessary for them to defer their evening toilet until after their arrival.