Fiction > Book editions > New York, 1885 - Dynamiter

28o THE BRO WN BOX.
TEE BROWN BOX {concluded).
THE effect of this tale on the mind of Harry
Desboroiigh was instant and convincing.
The Fair Cuban had been ah-eady the loveliest,
she now became in his eyes, the most romantic,
the most innocent and the most unhappy of her
sex. He was bereft of words to utter what he
felt : what pity, what admiration, what youth-
ful envy of a career so vivid and adventurous.
' ' Oh, madam ! " he began ; and finding no lan-
guage adequate to that apostrophe, caught up
her hand and wrung it in his own. ' ' Count
upon me," he added, with bewildered fervor;
and getting somehow or other out of the apart-
ment and from the circle of that radiant sor-
. ceress, he found himself in the strange out-of-
doors, beholding dull houses, wondering at dull
passers-by, a fallen angel. She had smiled
upon him as he left, and with how significant,
how beautiful a smile ! The memory lingered
in his heart ; and when he found his way to a
certain restaurant where music was performed,
flutes (as it were of Paradise) accompanied his
meal. The strings went to the melody of that
parting smile ; they paraphrased and glossed it
in the sense that he desired ; and for the first
time in his plain and somewhat dreary life, he
perceived himself to have a taste for music.