blazing under the wooden mantle--and then--and then--a
pattering of little feet down the stairs--Hem! hem! said Gabriel Bennet,
clearing his throat, as if to arouse himself by making a noise. For there
was a sound of feet upon the stairs, and the next moment May and her
sister Fanny entered the room. Gabriel rose and bowed, and held out his
hand. Mrs. Alfred Dinks said, "How do you do?" and seated herself without
taking the hand.

Time had not softened her face, but sharpened it, and her eyes were of a
fierce blackness. She looked forty years old; and there was a permanent
frown of her dark brows.

"So this silly May is going to marry you?" said she, addressing Gabriel.

Surprised by this kind of congratulation, but also much amused by it, as
if there could be nothing so ludicrous as the idea of May not marrying a
man who loved her as he loved, Gabriel gravely responded,

"Yes, ma'am, she is set upon it."

Fanny Newt, who had seated herself with an air of utter and chronic
contempt and indifference, and who looked away from Gabriel the moment
she had spoken to him, now turned toward him again suddenly with an
expression like that of an animal which pricks up his ears. The keen
fire of the old days shot for a moment into her eyes, for it was the
first word of badinage or humor that Fanny Newt had heard for a long,
long time.

"A woman who is such a fool as to marry ought to be unhappy," she
replied, with her eyes fixed upon Gabriel.

"A man who persuades her to do it ought to be taken out and hung,"
answered he, with aphoristic gravity.

Fanny was perplexed.

"Better to be the slave of a parent than a husband," she continued.

"I'd lock him out," retorted Gabriel, with pure irrelevancy; "I'd scotch
his sheets; I'd pour water in his boots; I'd sift sand in his hair-brush;
I'd spatter vitriol on his shirts. A man who marries a woman deserves
nothing better."

He wagged his foot carelessly, took up one of the books upon the table,
and looked into it indifferently. Fanny Newt turned to her sister, who
sat smiling by her side.

"What is the matter with this man?" asked Mrs. Alfred Dinks, audibly, of
May.

"There is a pregnant text, my dear Mrs. Dinks, _nee_ Newt, a name which I
delight to pronounce," said Gabriel, striking in before May could reply,
with the lightest tone and the soberest face in the world, "which
instructs us to answer a fool according to his folly."

Fanny was really confounded. She had h