Page:Hard-pan; a story of bonanza fortunes (IA hardpanbonanza00bonnrich).pdf/25

Rh had said she was pretty. Undoubtedly she was, but she was something more than pretty. Refined, delicate, poetic—there was no word that described it. If Letitia went about talking of her, other people would want to see her. He resented the idea violently, and felt his anger rising at the thought of the coarse curiosity and comment that would suddenly surround her. Some one ought to stop Letitia from talking that way.

"For," thought John Gault, as he turned a corner and came within view of Colonel Reed's abode, "I am the prince who has found the Sleeping Beauty."

The house, like many in that quarter of the city, was detached, and had once been a dwelling with pretensions to gentility. Time and weather had worked their will of it, and even under the kindly veil of night its haggard dilapidation was visible. It sat back a few feet from the street in a square of garden, where a tall dracæna shook its rustling foliage to every breeze. There was a large flowering jasmine-tree by the gate, that spread a sweet scent through the noisome airs of that old and ill-drained quarter. The visitor softly opened the gate and entered up a pathway flagged with squares of black and white stone that were broken and uneven. From the front window—a wide bay shrouded in vines—the light