Page:Watch and Ward (Boston, Houghton, Osgood and Company, 1878).djvu/59

56 Looking up, at this point, she beheld Roger asleep. She smiled softly, and privately resumed her reading. At the end of an hour, Roger, having finished his nap, rather startled her by his excessive annoyance at his lapse of consciousness. He wondered whether he had snored, but the absurd fellow was ashamed to ask her. Recovering himself finally, "The fact is, Nora," he said, "all novels seem to me stupid. They are nothing to what I can fancy! I have in my heart a prettier romance than any of them."

"A romance?" said Nora, simply. "Pray let me hear it. You are quite as good a hero as this stick of a Philip. Begin!"

He stood before the fire, looking at her with almost funereal gravity. "My dénouement is not yet written," he said. "Wait till the story is finished; then you shall hear the whole."

As at this time Nora put on long dresses and began to arrange her hair as a young lady, it occurred to Roger that he might make some change in his own appearance and reinforce his waning attractions. He was now thirty three; he fancied he was growing stout. Bald, corpulent, middle-aged,—at this rate he should soon be shelved! He was seized with a mad desire to win back the lost graces of youth. He had a dozen interviews with his tailor, the result of which was that for a fortnight he appeared daily in a new garment. Suddenly, amid this restless longing to revise and embellish himself, he determined to suppress his whiskers. This would take off five years. He appeared, therefore, one morning, in the severe simplicity of a mustache. Nora started, and greeted