_ PHOEBE PYNCHEON slept, on the night of her arrival, in a chamber
that looked down on the garden of the old house. It fronted
towards the east, so that at a very seasonable hour a glow of
crimson light came flooding through the window, and bathed the
dingy ceiling and paper-hangings in its own hue. There were
curtains to Phoebe's bed; a dark, antique canopy, and ponderous
festoons of a stuff which had been rich, and even magnificent,
in its time; but which now brooded over the girl like a cloud,
making a night in that one corner, while elsewhere it was
beginning to be day. The morning light, however, soon stole
into the aperture at the foot of the bed, betwixt those faded
curtains. Finding the new guest there,--with a bloom on her
cheeks like the morning's own, and a gentle stir of departing
slumber in her limbs, as when an early breeze moves the foliage,
--the dawn kissed her brow. It was the caress which a dewy
maiden--such as the Dawn is, immortally--gives to her sleeping
sister, partly from the impulse of irresistible fondness, and
partly as a pretty hint that it is time now to unclose her eyes.
At the touch of those lips of light, Phoebe quietly awoke, and,
for a moment, did not recognize where she was, nor how those heavy
curtains chanced to be festooned around her. Nothing, indeed,
was absolutely plain to her, except that it was now early morning,
and that, whatever might happen next, it was proper, first of all,
to get up and say her prayers. She was the more inclined to devotion
from the grim aspect of the chamber and its furniture, especially
the tall, stiff chairs; one of which stood close by her bedside,
and looked as if some old-fashioned personage had been sitting there
all night, and had vanished only just in season to escape discovery.
When Phoebe was quite dressed, she peeped out of the window,
and saw a rosebush in the garden. Being a very tall one, and of
luxuriant growth, it had been propped up against the side of the
house, and was literally covered with a rare and very beautiful
species of white rose. A large portion of them, as the girl
afterwards discovered, had blight or mildew at their hearts; but,
viewed at a fair distance, the whole rosebush looked as if it had
been brought from Eden that very summer, together with the mould
in which it grew. The truth was, nevertheless, that it had been
planted by Alice Pyncheon,--she was Phoebe's great-great-grand-aunt,
--in soil which, reckoning only its cultivation as a garden-plat,
was now unctuous with nearly two hundred years of vegetable decay.
Growing as they did, however, out of the old earth, the flowers
still sent a fresh and sweet incense up to their Creator; nor could
it have been the less pure and acceptable because Phoebe's young
breath mingled with it, as the fragrance floated past the window.
Hastening down the creaking and carpetless staircase, she found
her way into the garden, gathered some of the most perfect of the
roses, and brought them to her chamber.
Little Phoebe was one of those persons who possess, as their
exclusive patrimony, the gift of practical arrangement. It
is a kind of natural magic that enables these favored ones to
bring out the hidden capabilities of things around them; and
particularly to give a look of comfort and habitableness to any
place which, for however brief a period, may happen to be their
home. A wild hut of underbrush, tossed together by wayfarers
through the primitive forest, would acquire the home aspect by
one night's lodging of such a woman, and would retain it long
after her quiet figure had disappeared into the surrounding shade.
No less a portion of such homely witchcraft was requisite to
reclaim, as it were, Phoebe's waste, cheerless, and dusky
chamber, which had been untenanted so long--except by spiders,
and mice, and rats, and ghosts--that it was all overgrown with
the desolation which watches to obliterate every trace of man's
happier hours. What was precisely Phoebe's process we find it
impossible to say. She appeared to have no preliminary design,
but gave a touch here and another there; brought some articles of
furniture to light and dragged others into the shadow; looped up
or let down a window-curtain; and, in the course of half an hour,
had fully succeeded in throwing a kindly and hospitable smile over
the apartment. N o longer ago than the night before, it had
resembled nothing so much as the old maid's heart; for there was
neither sunshine nor household fire in one nor the other, and,
Save for ghosts and ghostly reminiscences, not a guest, for many
years gone by, had entered the heart or the chamber.
There was still another peculiarity of this inscrutable charm.
The bedchamber, No doubt, was a chamber of very great and varied
experience, as a scene of human life: the joy of bridal nights
had throbbed itself away here; new immortals had first drawn
earthly breath here; and here old people had died. But--whether
it were the white roses, or whatever the subtile influence might
be--a person of delicate instinct would have known at once that
it was now a maiden's bedchamber, and had been purified of all
former evil and sorrow by her sweet breath and happy thoughts.
Her dreams of the past night, being such cheerful ones, had
exorcised the gloom, and now haunted the chamber in its stead.
After arranging matters to her satisfaction, Phoebe emerged from
her chamber, with a purpose to descend again into the garden.
Besides the rosebush, she had observed several other species of
flowers growing there in a wilderness of neglect, and obstructing
one another's development (as is often the parallel case in human
society) by their uneducated entanglement and confusion. At the
head of the stairs, however, she met Hepzibah, who, it being still
early, invited her into a room which she would probably have called
her boudoir, had her education embraced any such French phrase.
It was strewn about with a few old books, and a work-basket, and a
dusty writing-desk; and had, on one side, a large black article of
furniture, of very strange appearance, which the old gentlewoman
told Phoebe was a harpsichord. It looked more like a coffin than
anything else; and, indeed,--not having been played upon, or opened,
for years,--there must have been a vast deal of dead music in it,
stifled for want of air. Human finger was hardly known to have
touched its chords since the days of Alice Pyncheon, who had
learned the sweet accomplishment of melody in Europe.
Hepzibah bade her young guest sit down, and, herself taking a
chair near by, looked as earnestly at Phoebe's trim little figure
as if she expected to see right into its springs and motive secrets.
"Cousin Phoebe," said she, at last, "I really can't see my way
clear to keep you with me."
These words, however, had not the inhospitable bluntness with
which they may strike the reader; for the two relatives, in a talk
before bedtime, had arrived at a certain degree of mutual
understanding. Hepzibah knew enough to enable her to appreciate
the circumstances (resulting from the second marriage of the
girl's mother) which made it desirable for Phoebe to establish
herself in another home. Nor did she misinterpret Phoebe's
character, and the genial activity pervading it,--one of the most
valuable traits of the true New England woman,--which had
impelled her forth, as might be said, to seek her fortune, but with
a self-respecting purpose to confer as much benefit as she could
anywise receive. As one of her nearest kindred, she had naturally
betaken herself to Hepzibah, with no idea of forcing herself on
her cousin's protection, but only for a visit of a week or two,
which might be indefinitely extended, should it prove for the
happiness of both.
To Hepzibah's blunt observation, therefore, Phoebe replied as frankly,
and more cheerfully.
"Dear cousin, I cannot tell how it will be," said she. "But I really
think we may suit one another much better than you suppose."
"You are a nice girl,--I see it plainly," continued Hepzibah; "and
it is not any question as to that point which makes me hesitate.
But, Phoebe, this house of mine is but a melancholy place for a
young person to be in. It lets in the wind and rain, and the Snow,
too, in the garret and upper chambers, in winter-time, but it never
lets in the sunshine. And as for myself, you see what I am,--a dismal
and lonesome old woman (for I begin to call myself old, Phoebe),
whose temper, I am afraid, is none of the best, and whose spirits
are as bad as can be I cannot make your life pleasant, Cousin Phoebe,
neither can I so much as give you bread to eat."
"You will find me a cheerful little, body" answered Phoebe, smiling,
and yet with a kind of gentle dignity. "and I mean to earn my bread.
You know I have not been brought up a Pyncheon. A girl learns many
things in a New England village."
"Ah! Phoebe," said Hepzibah, sighing, "your knowledge would do
but little for you here! And then it is a wretched thought that
you should fling away your young days in a place like this.
Those cheeks would not be so rosy after a month or two. Look
at my face!"and, indeed, the contrast was very striking,--"you see
how pale I am! It is my idea that the dust and continual decay
of these old houses are unwholesome for the lungs."
"There is the garden,--the flowers to be taken care of," observed
Phoebe. "I should keep myself healthy with exercise in the open air."
"And, after all, child," exclaimed Hepzibah, suddenly rising, as if
to dismiss the subject, "it is not for me to say who shall be a guest
or inhabitant of the old Pyncheon House. Its master is coming."
"Do you mean Judge Pyncheon?" asked Phoebe in surprise.
"Judge Pyncheon!" answered her cousin angrily. "He will hardly
cross the threshold while I live! No, no! But, Phoebe, you shall
see the face of him I speak of."
She went in quest of the miniature already described, and
returned with it in her hand. Giving it to Phoebe, she watched
her features narrowly, and with a certain jealousy as to the mode
in which the girl would show herself affected by the picture.
"How do you like the face?" asked Hepzibah.
"It is handsome!--it is very beautiful!" said Phoebe admiringly.
"It is as sweet a face as a man's can be, or ought to be. It has
something of a child's expression,--and yet not childish,--only one
feels so very kindly towards him! He ought never to suffer
anything. One would bear much for the sake of sparing him toil
or sorrow. Who is it, Cousin Hepzibah?"
"Did you never hear," whispered her cousin, bending towards her,
"of Clifford Pyncheon?"
"Never. I thought there were no Pyncheons left, except yourself
and our cousin Jaffrey," answered Phoebe. "And yet I seem to
have heard the name of Clifford Pyncheon. Yes!--from my father
or my mother. but has he not been a long while dead?"
"Well, well, child, perhaps he has!" said Hepzibah with a sad,
hollow laugh; "but, in old houses like this, you know, dead
people are very apt to come back again! We shall see. And,
Cousin Phoebe, since, after all that I have said, your courage
does not fail you, we will not part so soon. You are welcome,
my child, for the present, to such a home as your kinswoman
can offer you."
With this measured, but not exactly cold assurance of a
hospitable purpose, Hepzibah kissed her cheek.
They now went below stairs, where Phoebe--not so much assuming
the office as attracting it to herself, by the magnetism of
innate fitness--took the most active part in preparing breakfast.
The mistress of the house, meanwhile, as is usual with persons
of her stiff and unmalleable cast, stood mostly aside; willing
to lend her aid, yet conscious that her natural inaptitude would
be likely to impede the business in hand. Phoebe and the fire
that boiled the teakettle were equally bright, cheerful, and
efficient, in their respective offices. Hepzibah gazed forth
from her habitual sluggishness, the necessary result of long
solitude, as from another sphere. She could not help being
interested, however, and even amused, at the readiness with
which her new inmate adapted herself to the circumstances,
and brought the house, moreover, and all its rusty old appliances,
into a suitableness for her purposes. Whatever she did, too,
was done without conscious effort, and with frequent outbreaks of
song, which were exceedingly pleasant to the ear. This natural
tunefulness made Phoebe seem like a bird in a shadowy tree;
or conveyed the idea that the stream of life warbled through her
heart as a brook sometimes warbles through a pleasant little dell.
It betokened the cheeriness of an active temperament, finding joy
in its activity, and, therefore, rendering it beautiful; it was a
New England trait,--the stern old stuff of Puritanism with a gold
thread in the web.
Hepzibah brought out Some old silver spoons with the family
crest upon them, and a china tea-set painted over with grotesque
figures of man, bird, and beast, in as grotesque a landscape.
These pictured people were odd humorists, in a world of their
own,--a world of vivid brilliancy, so far as color went, and still
unfaded, although the teapot and small cups were as ancient as
the custom itself of tea-drinking.
"Your great-great-great-great-grandmother had these cups, when
she was married," said Hepzibah to Phoebe."She was a
Davenport, of a good family. They were almost the first teacups
ever seen in the colony; and if one of them were to be broken,
my heart would break with it. But it is Nonsense to speak so
about a brittle teacup, when I remember what my heart has gone
through without breaking."
The cups--not having been used, perhaps, since Hepzibah's
youth--had contracted no small burden of dust, which Phoebe
washed away with so much care and delicacy as to satisfy even
the proprietor of this invaluable china.
"What a nice little housewife you. are" exclaimed the latter,
smiling, and at the Same time frowning so prodigiously that the
smile was sunshine under a thunder-cloud. "Do you do other
things as well? Are you as good at your book as you are at
washing teacups?"
"Not quite, I am afraid," said Phoebe, laughing at the form of
Hepzibah's question. "But I was schoolmistress for the little
children in our district last summer, and might have been so still."
"Ah! 'tis all very well!" observed the maiden lady, drawing herself
up. "But these things must have come to you with your mother's
blood. I never knew a Pyncheon that had any turn for them."
It is very queer, but not the less true, that people are generally
quite as vain, or even more so, of their deficiencies than of their
available gifts; as was Hepzibah of this native inapplicability,
so to speak, of the Pyncheons to any useful purpose. She regarded
it as an hereditary trait; and so, perhaps, it was, but unfortunately
a morbid one, such as is often generated in families that remain
long above the surface of society.
Before they left the breakfast-table, the shop-bell rang sharply,
and Hepzibah set down the remnant of her final cup of tea, with
a look of sallow despair that was truly piteous to behold. In cases
of distasteful occupation, the second day is generally worse than
the first. we return to the rack with all the soreness of the
preceding torture in our limbs. At all events, Hepzibah had fully
satisfied herself of the impossibility of ever becoming wonted to
this peevishly obstreperous little bell. Ring as often as it might,
the sound always smote upon her nervous system rudely and suddenly.
And especially now, while, with her crested teaspoons and antique
china, she was flattering herself with ideas of gentility, she felt
an unspeakable disinclination to confront a customer.
"Do not trouble yourself, dear cousin!" cried Phoebe, starting
lightly up. "I am shop-keeper today."
"You, child!" exclaimed Hepzibah. "What can a little country girl
know of such matters?"
"Oh, I have done all the shopping for the family at our village
store," said Phoebe. "And I have had a table at a fancy fair, and
made better sales than anybody. These things are not to be learnt;
they depend upon a knack that comes, I suppose," added she,
smiling, "with one's mother's blood. You shall see that I am
as nice a little saleswoman as I am a housewife!"
The old gentlewoman stole behind Phoebe, and peeped from the
passageway into the shop, to note how she would manage her
undertaking. It was a case of some intricacy. A very ancient
woman, in a white short gown and a green petticoat, with a string
of gold beads about her neck, and what looked like a nightcap
on her head, had brought a quantity of yarn to barter for the
commodities of the shop. She was probably the very last person
in town who still kept the time-honored spinning-wheel in constant
revolution. It was worth while to hear the croaking and hollow
tones of the old lady, and the pleasant voice of Phoebe, mingling
in one twisted thread of talk; and still better to contrast their
figures,--so light and bloomy,--so decrepit and dusky,--with only
the counter betwixt them, in one sense, but more than threescore
years, in another. As for the bargain, it was wrinkled slyness
and craft pitted against native truth and sagacity.
"Was not that well done?" asked Phoebe, laughing, when the
customer was gone.
"Nicely done, indeed, child!" answered Hepzibah."I could not
have gone through with it nearly so well. As you say, it must be
a knack that belongs to you on the mother's side."
It is a very genuine admiration, that with which persons too shy
or too awkward to take a due part in the bustling world regard
the real actors in life's stirring scenes; so genuine, in fact,
that the former are usually fain to make it palatable to their
self-love, by assuming that these active and forcible qualities
are incompatible with others, which they choose to deem higher
and more important. Thus, Hepzibah was well content to acknowledge
Phoebe's vastly superior gifts as a shop-keeper'--she listened,
with compliant ear, to her suggestion of various methods whereby
the influx of trade might be increased, and rendered profitable,
without a hazardous outlay of capital. She consented that the
village maiden should manufacture yeast, both liquid and in cakes;
and should brew a certain kind of beer, nectareous to the palate,
and of rare stomachic virtues; and, moreover, should bake and
exhibit for sale some little spice-cakes, which whosoever tasted
would longingly desire to taste again. All such proofs of a
ready mind and skilful handiwork were highly acceptable to the
aristocratic hucksteress, so long as she could murmur to herself
with a grim smile, and a half-natural sigh, and a sentiment of
mixed wonder, pity, and growing affection,--
"What a nice little body she is! If she only could be a lady;
too--but that's impossible! Phoebe is no Pyncheon. She takes
everything from her mother."
As to Phoebe's not being a lady, or whether she were a lady or
no, it was a point, perhaps, difficult to decide, but which could
hardly have come up for judgment at all in any fair and healthy
mind. Out of New England, it would be impossible to meet with
a person combining so many ladylike attributes with so many
others that form no necessary (if compatible) part of the
character. She shocked no canon of taste; she was admirably in
keeping with herself, and never jarred against surrounding
circumstances. Her figure, to be sure,--so small as to be almost
childlike, and so elastic that motion seemed as easy or easier to
it than rest,would hardly have suited one's idea of a countess.
Neither did her face--with the brown ringlets on either side, and
the slightly piquant nose, and the wholesome bloom, and the
clear shade of tan, and the half dozen freckles, friendly
remembrances of the April sun and breeze--precisely give us a
right to call her beautiful. But there was both lustre and depth in
her eyes. She was very pretty; as graceful as a bird, and graceful
much in the same way; as pleasant about the house as a gleam of
sunshine falling on the floor through a shadow of twinkling leaves,
or as a ray of firelight that dances on the wall while evening is
drawing nigh. Instead of discussing her claim to rank among ladies,
it would be preferable to regard Phoebe as the example of feminine
grace and availability combined, in a state of society, if there
were any such, where ladies did not exist. There it should be
woman's office to move in the midst of practical affairs, and to
gild them all, the very homeliest,--were it even the scouring of
pots and kettles,--with an atmosphere of loveliness and joy.
Such was the sphere of Phoebe. To find the born and educated
lady, on the other hand, we need look no farther than Hepzibah,
our forlorn old maid, in her rustling and rusty silks, with her
deeply cherished and ridiculous consciousness of long descent,
her shadowy claims to princely territory, and, in the way of
accomplishment, her recollections, it may be, of having formerly
thrummed on a harpsichord, and walked a minuet, and worked an
antique tapestry-stitch on her sampler. It was a fair parallel
between new Plebeianism and old Gentility.
It really seemed as if the battered visage of the House of the
Seven Gables, black and heavy-browed as it still certainly looked,
must have shown a kind of cheerfulness glimmering through its
dusky windows as Phoebe passed to and fro in the interior.
Otherwise, it is impossible to explain how the people of the
neighborhood so soon became aware of the girl's presence. There
was a great run of custom, setting steadily in, from about ten o'
clock until towards noon,--relaxing, somewhat, at dinner-time,
but recommencing in the afternoon, and, finally, dying away a half
an hour or so before the long day's sunset. One of the stanchest
patrons was little Ned Higgins, the devourer of Jim Crow and the
elephant, who to-day signalized his omnivorous prowess by
swallowing two dromedaries and a locomotive. Phoebe laughed,
as she summed up her aggregate of sales upon the slate; while
Hepzibah, first drawing on a pair of silk gloves, reckoned over
the sordid accumulation of copper coin, not without silver
intermixed, that had jingled into the till.
"We must renew our stock, Cousin Hepzibah!" cried the little
saleswoman. "The gingerbread figures are all gone, and so are
those Dutch wooden milkmaids, and most of our other playthings.
There has been constant inquiry for cheap raisins, and a great
cry for whistles, and trumpets, and jew's-harps; and at least a
dozen little boys have asked for molasses-candy. And we must
contrive to get a peck of russet apples, late in the season as
it is. But, dear cousin, what an enormous heap of copper!
Positively a copper mountain!"
"Well done! well done! well done!" quoth Uncle Venner, who had
taken occasion to shuffle in and out of the shop several times
in the course of the day. "Here's a girl that will never end
her days at my farm! Bless my eyes, what a brisk little soul!"
"Yes, Phoebe is a nice girl!" said Hepzibah, with a scowl of
austere approbation. "But, Uncle Venner, you have known the
family a great many years. Can you tell me whether there ever
was a Pyncheon whom she takes after?"
"I don't believe there ever was," answered the venerable man.
"At any rate, it never was my luck to see her like among them,
nor, for that matter, anywhere else. I've seen a great deal of
the world, not only in people's kitchens and back-yards but at
the street-corners, and on the wharves, and in other places
where my business calls me; and I'm free to say, Miss Hepzibah,
that I never knew a human creature do her work so much like one
of God's angels as this child Phoebe does!"
Uncle Venner's eulogium, if it appear rather too high-strained
for the person and occasion, had, nevertheless, a sense in which
it was both subtile and true. There was a spiritual quality in
Phoebe's activity. The life of the long and busy day--spent in
occupations that might so easily have taken a squalid and ugly
aspect--had been made pleasant, and even lovely, by the
spontaneous grace with which these homely duties seemed to
bloom out of her character; so that labor, while she dealt with
it, had the easy and flexible charm of play. Angels do not toil,
but let their good works grow out of them; and so did Phoebe.
The two relatives--the young maid and the old one--found time
before nightfall, in the intervals of trade, to make rapid advances
towards affection and confidence. A recluse, like Hepzibah,
usually displays remarkable frankness, and at least temporary
affability, on being absolutely cornered, and brought to the point
of personal intercourse; like the angel whom Jacob wrestled with,
she is ready to bless you when once overcome.
The old gentlewoman took a dreary and proud satisfaction in
leading Phoebe from room to room of the house, and recounting
the traditions with which, as we may say, the walls were
lugubriously frescoed. She showed the indentations made by the
lieutenant-governor's sword-hilt in the door-panels of the
apartment where old Colonel Pyncheon, a dead host, had received
his affrighted visitors with an awful frown. The dusky terror of
that frown, Hepzibah observed, was thought to be lingering ever
since in the passageway. She bade Phoebe step into one of the
tall chairs, and inspect the ancient map of the Pyncheon territory
at the eastward. In a tract of land on which she laid her finger,
there existed a silver mine, the locality of which was precisely
pointed out in some memoranda of Colonel Pyncheon himself, but
only to be made known when the family claim should be recognized
by government. Thus it was for the interest of all New England
that the Pyncheons should have justice done them. She told, too,
how that there was undoubtedly an immense treasure of English
guineas hidden somewhere about the house, or in the cellar, or
possibly in the garden.
"If you should happen to find it, Phoebe," said Hepzibah, glancing
aside at her with a grim yet kindly smile, "we will tie up the
shop-bell for good and all!"
"Yes, dear cousin," answered Phoebe; "but, in the mean time, I hear
somebody ringing it!"
When the customer was gone, Hepzibah talked rather vaguely,
and at great length, about a certain Alice Pyncheon, who had
been exceedingly beautiful and accomplished in her lifetime,
a hundred years ago. The fragrance of her rich and delightful
character still lingered about the place where she had lived,
as a dried rosebud scents the drawer where it has withered
and perished. This lovely Alice had met with some great and
mysterious calamity, and had grown thin and white, and gradually
faded out of the world. But, even now, she was supposed to
haunt the House of the Seven Gables, and, a great many times,
--especially when one of the Pyncheons was to die,--she had
been heard playing sadly and beautifully on the harpsichord.
One of these tunes, just as it had sounded from her spiritual
touch, had been written down by an amateur of music; it was so
exquisitely mournful that nobody, to this day, could bear to
hear it played, unless when a great sorrow had made them know
the still profounder sweetness of it.
"Was it the same harpsichord that you showed me?" inquired Phoebe.
"The very same," said Hepzibah. "It was Alice Pyncheon's
harpsichord. When I was learning music, my father would never
let me open it. So, as I could only play on my teacher's
instrument, I have forgotten all my music long ago."
Leaving these antique themes, the old lady began to talk about
the daguerreotypist, whom, as he seemed to be a well-meaning
and orderly young man, and in narrow circumstances, she had
permitted to take up his residence in one of the seven gables.
But, on seeing more of Mr. Holgrave, she hardly knew what to
make of him. He had the strangest companions imaginable; men
with long beards, and dressed in linen blouses, and other such
new-fangled and ill-fitting garments; reformers, temperance
lecturers, and all manner of cross-looking philanthropists;
community-men, and come-outers, as Hepzibah believed, who
acknowledged no law, and ate no solid food, but lived on the
scent of other people's cookery, and turned up their noses at
the fare. As for the daguerreotypist, she had read a paragraph
in a penny paper, the other day, accusing him of making a speech
full of wild and disorganizing matter, at a meeting of his
banditti-like associates. For her own part, she had reason to
believe that he practised animal magnetism, and, if such things
were in fashion nowadays, should be apt to suspect him of studying
the Black Art up there in his lonesome chamber.
"But, dear cousin," said Phoebe, "if the young man is so
dangerous, why do you let him stay? If he does nothing worse,
he may set the house on fire!"
"Why, sometimes," answered Hepzibah, "I have seriously made
it a question, whether I ought not to send him away. But, with
all his oddities, he is a quiet kind of a person, and has such
a way of taking hold of one's mind, that, without exactly liking
him (for I don't know enough of the young man), I should be
sorry to lose sight of him entirely. A woman clings to slight
acquaintances when she lives so much alone as I do."
"But if Mr. Holgrave is a lawless person!" remonstrated Phoebe,
a part of whose essence it was to keep within the limits of law.
"Oh!" said Hepzibah carelessly,--for, formal as she was, still,
in her life's experience, she had gnashed her teeth against human
law,--"I suppose he has a law of his own!" _