than Mrs. Jane
Dudley Webb. She had been on a visit to Richmond, and he had seen her
only two hours before safely started on her homeward journey. The truth
was that Mrs. Webb and Eugenia had asserted for the past two days an
implacable hostility, and Dudley's genial efforts at pacification had
resulted merely in diverting a share of the unpleasantness upon his own
head. It was a lamentable fact that Eugenia, who was amiable to the
point of weakness where members of the Battle family were concerned,
found it impossible to harmonise with the elder Mrs. Webb. They had
disagreed upon such important subjects as Miss Chris's housekeeping and
Dudley's moral welfare, until Eugenia, after an inglorious defeat, had
relapsed into silence--a silence broken only upon Dudley's return from
the station, when she had unbosomed herself of the declaration that she
"couldn't stand his mother, and it was as much as she could do to stand
him." Dudley had met this alarming outburst with its logical retort,
"Hadn't you better see a doctor, Eugie?" whereupon Eugenia had protested
that "if she wasn't fit for an asylum, he needn't thank Mrs. Webb," and
had dissolved in tears.

At the moment Dudley had experienced a warm recognition of his
generosity in refraining from the use of his own endurance of many
Battles, as an illustration of the opposite and virtuous course; but
upon later reflection he frankly admitted that the cases were by no
means similar. It had not occurred to him, he recalled, to deny that
Mrs. Webb was singularly trying, though he wondered, half resentfully,
why Eugenia could not be brought to regard that lady's foibles from his
own gently humorous point of view. He was not in the least disconcerted
by his mother's solicitude as to the condition of his soul, or by the
fact that she still felt constrained to allude to the governor of the
State as "a person of low antecedents." Personally, he was inclined to
admire--and frankly to admit it--the ability which had brought Burr into
prominence from a position of evident obscurity, while he regarded Mrs.
Webb's eccentric attitude as a kind of antedated comedy. What he
objected to was his wife's inability to grasp the keynote of the
situation.

It was pleasant to reflect, however, as he leisurely descended the
steps, that he had brought Eugenia round by less heroic measures than an
assault upon her family altars. He was glad to think that he had given
her a cup of tea instead.

C