rom the wounds of combat, as she had given us to
suppose, perhaps Hortense Rieppe hadn't released him from his plighted
troth, as Juno had also announced; and distinct relief filled me when I
reasoned this out. I leave others to reason out why it was relief, and
why a dull disappointment had come over me at the news that the match
was off. This, for me, should have been good news, when you consider
that I had been so lately telling myself such a marriage must not be,
that I must myself, somehow (since no one else would), step in and
arrest the calamity; and it seems odd that I should have felt this
blankness and regret upon learning that the parties had happily settled
it for themselves, and hence my difficult and delicate assistance was
never to be needed by them.

Did any one else now sitting at our table know of Miss Rieppe's reported
act? What particulars concerning John's fight had been given by Juno
before my entrance? It didn't surprise me that her nephew was in bed
from Master Mayrant's lusty blows. One could readily guess the manner
in which young John, with his pent-up fury over the custom house, would
"land" his chastisement all over the person of any rash critic! And what
a talking about it must be going on everywhere to-day! If Kings Port
tongues had been set in motion over me and my small notebook in a
library, the whole town must be buzzing over every bruise given and
taken in this evidently emphatic battle. I had hoped to glean some
more precise information from my fellow-boarders after Juno had
disembarrassed us of her sonorous presence; but even if they were
possessed of all the facts which I lacked, Mrs. Trevise in some masterly
fashion of her own banished the subject from further discussion. She
held us off from it chiefly, I think, by adopting a certain upright
posture in her chair, and a certain tone when she inquired if we wished
a second help of the pudding. After thirty-five years of boarders and
butchers, life held no secrets or surprises for her; she was a mature,
lone, disenchanted, able lady, and even her silence was like an arm of
the law.

An all too brief conversation, nipped by Mrs. Trevise at a stage even
earlier than the bud, revealed to me that perhaps my fellow-boarders
would have been glad to ask me questions, too.

It was the male honeymooner who addressed me. "Did I understand you to
say, sir, that Mr. Mayrant had received a bruise over his left eye?"

"Daphne!" called out Mrs