And the more he was enabled to measure himself with other men, the more confidence he acquired in his own powers.  This severe mental labor took away much of the pain of his “despised love.”  Ishmael was one to love strongly, ardently, constantly.  But he was not one to drivel over a hopeless passion.  He loved Claudia:  how deeply, how purely, how faithfully, all his future life was destined to prove.  And he knew that Claudia loved him; but that all the prejudices of her rank, her character, and her education were warring in her bosom against this love.  He knew that she appreciated his personal worth, but scorned his social position.  He felt that she had resolved never, under any circumstances whatever, to marry him; but he trusted in her honor never to permit her, while loving him, to marry another.  And in the meantime years of toil would pass; he would achieve greatness; and when the obscurity of his origin should be lost in the light of his fame, then he would woo and win Miss Merlin!

Such were the young man’s dreams, whenever in his busy, crowded, useful life he gave himself time to dream.

And meanwhile, what was the conduct of the heiress to her presumptuous lover?  Coldly proud, but very respectful.  For, mark you this:  No one who was capable of appreciating Ishmael Worth could possibly treat him otherwise than with respect.

CHAPTER LI.

HEIRESS AND BEAUTY.

  ’Tis hard upon the dawn, and yet
    She comes not from the ball. 
  The night is cold and bleak and wet,
    And the snow lies over all.

  I praised her with her diamonds on! 
    And as she went she smiled,
  And yet I sighed when she was gone,
    I sighed like any child.

  —­Meredith.

Meanwhile all Claudia Merlin’s time was taken up with milliners, mantua makers, and jewelers.  She was to make her first appearance in society at the President’s first evening reception, which was to be held on Friday, the sixth of January.  It was now very near the New Year, and all her intervening time was occupied in preparations for the festivities that were to attend it.

On the twenty-third of December, two days before Christmas, Mr. and Mrs. Middleton and all their family arrived.  They came up by the “Columbia,” and reached Judge Merlin’s house early in the morning.  Consequently they were not fatigued, and the day of their arrival was a day of unalloyed pleasure and of family jubilee.

Ishmael took sympathetic part in all the rejoicings, and was caressed by Mr. and Mrs. Middleton and all their younger children as a sort of supplementary son and brother.

On Christmas Eve, also, Reuben Gray, Hannah, and her children came to town in their wagon.  Honest Reuben had brought a load of turkeys for the Christmas market, and had “put up” at a plain, respectable inn, much frequented by the farmers, near the market house; but in the course of the day he and his wife, leaving the children in the care of their faithful Sally, who had accompanied them in the character of nurse, called on Ishmael and brought him his trunk of wearing apparel.