Are you surprised at my liking him?  There is nothing to be surprised at.  The professor lived long enough to elevate me above the common prejudice against the reptile creation.  Properly understood, the reptile creation is beautiful.  Properly dissected, the reptile creation is instructive in the last degree.”  She stretched out her little finger, and gently stroked the toad’s back with the tip of it.  “So refreshing to the touch,” said Mrs. Lecount—­“so nice and cool this summer weather!”

The bell from the parlor rang.  Mrs. Lecount rose, bent fondly over the Aquarium, and chirruped to the toad at parting as if it had been a bird.  “Mr. Vanstone is ready to receive you.  Follow me, if you please, Miss Garth.”  With these words she opened the door, and led the way out of the room.

CHAPTER III.

“MISS GARTH, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount, opening the parlor door, and announcing the visitor’s appearance with the tone and manner of a well-bred servant.

Magdalen found herself in a long, narrow room, consisting of a back parlor and a front parlor, which had been thrown into one by opening the folding-doors between them.  Seated not far from the front window, with his back to the light, she saw a frail, flaxen-haired, self-satisfied little man, clothed in a fair white dressing-gown many sizes too large for him, with a nosegay of violets drawn neatly through the button-hole over his breast.  He looked from thirty to five-and-thirty years old.  His complexion was as delicate as a young girl’s, his eyes were of the lightest blue, his upper lip was adorned by a weak little white mustache, waxed and twisted at either end into a thin spiral curl.  When any object specially attracted his attention he half closed his eyelids to look at it.  When he smiled, the skin at his temples crumpled itself up into a nest of wicked little wrinkles.  He had a plate of strawberries on his lap, with a napkin under them to preserve the purity of his white dressing-gown.  At his right hand stood a large round table, covered with a collection of foreign curiosities, which seemed to have been brought together from the four quarters of the globe.  Stuffed birds from Africa, porcelain monsters from China, silver ornaments and utensils from India and Peru, mosaic work from Italy, and bronzes from France, were all heaped together pell-mell with the coarse deal boxes and dingy leather cases which served to pack them for traveling.  The little man apologized, with a cheerful and simpering conceit, for his litter of curiosities, his dressing-gown, and his delicate health; and, waving his hand toward a chair, placed his attention, with pragmatical politeness, at the visitor’s disposal.  Magdalen looked at him with a momentary doubt whether Mrs. Lecount had not deceived her.  Was this the man who mercilessly followed the path on which his merciless father had walked before him?  She could hardly believe it.  “Take a seat, Miss Garth,” he repeated, observing her hesitation, and announcing his own name in a high, thin, fretfully-consequential voice:  “I am Mr. Noel Vanstone.  You wished to see me—­here I am!”