hters, the agonies and desolations, I shall never die of love,
my-de'-seh, for very shame's sake."

This was much sentiment to risk within Doctor Keene's reach; but he took
no advantage of it.

"Honore," said he, as they joined hands on the banquette beside the
doctor's gig, to say good-day, "if you think there's a chance for you,
why stickle upon such fine-drawn points as I reckon you are making? Why,
sir, as I understand it, this is the only weak spot your action has
shown; you have taken an inoculation of Quixotic conscience from our
transcendental apothecary and perpetrated a lot of heroic behavior that
would have done honor to four-and-twenty Brutuses; and now that you have
a chance to do something easy and human, you shiver and shrink at the
'looks o' the thing.' Why, what do you care--"

"Hush!" said Honore; "do you suppose I have not temptation enough
already?"

He began to move away.

"Honore," said the doctor, following him a step, "I couldn't have made a
mistake--It's the little Monk,--it's Aurora, isn't it?"

Honore nodded, then faced his friend more directly, with a sudden new
thought.

"But, Doctor, why not take your own advice? I know not how you are
prevented; you have as good a right as Frowenfeld."

"It wouldn't be honest," said the doctor; "it wouldn't be the straight
up and down manly thing."

"Why not?"

The doctor stepped into his gig--

"Not till I feel all right _here_." (In his chest.)

CHAPTER LIII

FROWENFELD AT THE GRANDISSIME MANSION

One afternoon--it seems to have been some time in June, and consequently
earlier than Doctor Keene's return--the Grandissimes were set all
a-tremble with vexation by the discovery that another of their number
had, to use Agricola's expression, "gone over to the enemy,"--a phrase
first applied by him to Honore.

"What do you intend to convey by that term?" Frowenfeld had asked on
that earlier occasion.

"Gone over to the enemy means, my son, gone over to the enemy!" replied
Agricola. "It implies affiliation with Americains in matters of business
and of government! It implies the exchange of social amenities with a
race of upstarts! It implies a craven consent to submit the sacredest
prejudices of our fathers to the new-fangled measuring-rods of pert,
imported theories upon moral and political progress! It implies a
listening to, and reasoning with, the condemners of some of our most
time-honored and respectable practices! Reasoning