Don't forget, now!" The polite Major laid his hand upon his heart
and played the amiable tiger, although burning inwardly now, in a
fierce personal jealousy of Anstruther as he wandered alone around
the cold gray halls of the museum, and gazed upon the pinched
features of the permanently eclipsed shining lights of the "Bulwark
of Civil and Religious Liberty." There was no charm for him in the
bigoted ferocity of Calvin's lean, dark face, smacking his thin
lips over the roasted Servetus. He abhorred the departed heroes
of the golden evolution from Eidegenossen into Higuerios and later
Huguenots. They interested him not, neither did he love Professor
Calame's scratchy pictures, nor the jumbled bric-a-brac of art and
history. None of these charmed him. He waited only for the gliding
step, the clasp of a burning hand, and the flash of the lustrous
dark-brown eyes. It was his own innings now.
He had referred to his watch for the fiftieth time, when, from a
closed carriage, the object of his mental vituperations gracefully
alighted at last. It was with the very coldest of bows that the
irritated man received the graceful, self-possessed woman, whose
lovely face was but partially hidden by her coquettishly dotted
veil.
"She dresses like a Parisienne, walks like an Andalu-sian, and
has all the seductiveness of a Polish countess!" the quick-witted
rascal thought, as they strolled into the museum, which the departed
General Rath knew not would be the scene of many a hidden love
intrigue, when he endowed it with a benevolent vanity.
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