e told her they were my flowers?" I asked her at the
counter, as I prepared to depart. Eliza did not look up from her ledger.
"Do you think she would have believed me?"

"And why shouldn't--"

"Go out!" she interrupted imperiously and with a stamp of her foot.
"You've been here long enough!"

You may imagine my amazement at this. It was not until I had reached
Mrs. Trevise's, and was sitting down to answer a note which had been
left for me, that light again came. Hortense Rieppe had thought those
flowers were from John Mayrant, and Eliza had let her think so.

Yes, that was light, a good bright light shed on the matter; but a still
more brilliant beam was cast by the up-country bride when I came into
the dining-room. I told her myself, at once, that I had taken flowers to
Miss La Heu; I preferred she should hear this from me before she learned
it from the smiling lips of gossip. It surprised me that she should
immediately inquire what kind of flowers?

"Why, roses," I answered; and she went into peals of laughter.

"Pray share the jest," I begged her with some dignity.

"Didn't you know," she replied, "the language that roses from a single
gentleman to a young lady speak in Kings Port?"

I stood staring and stiff, taking it in, taking myself, and Eliza, and
Hortense, and the implicated John, all in.

"Why, aivrybody in Kings Port knows that!" said the bride; and now my
mirth rose even above hers.

XVII: Doing the Handsome Thing

It by no means lessened my pleasure to discern that Hortense must feel
herself to be in a predicament; and as I sat writing my answer to
the note, which was from Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael and contained an
invitation to me for the next afternoon, I thought of those pilots whose
dangers have come down to us from distant times through the songs of
ancient poets. The narrow and tempestuous channel between Scylla and
Charybdis bristled unquestionably with violent problems, but with none,
I should suppose, that called for a nicer hand upon the wheel, or an eye
more alert, than this steering of your little trireme to a successful
marriage, between one man who believed himself to be your destined
bridegroom and another who expected to be so, meanwhile keeping each
in ignorance of how close you were sailing to the other. In Hortense's
place I should have wished to hasten the wedding now, have it safely
performed this afternoon, say, or to-morrow morning; thus precipitated
by some inval