the expense. It's only the
family carriage;--surname and arms of Jones. Lucky there are no parents
to the fore. Put my shawl over you, so."

"O Blanche!" said Hope, "what injustice--"

"I've done myself?" said the volatile damsel. "Not a doubt of it. That's
my style, you know. But I have some sense; I know who's who. Now, Jones,
junior, make your man handle the ribbons. I've always had a grudge
against that ordinance about fast driving, and now's our chance."

And the sacred "ordinance," with all other proprieties, was left in
ruins that day. They tore along the Avenue with unexplained and most
inexplicable speed, Hope being concealed by riding backward, and by a
large shawl, and Blanche and her admirer receiving the full indignation
of every chaste and venerable eye. Those who had tolerated all this
girl's previous improprieties were obliged to admit that the line must
be drawn somewhere. She at once lost several good invitations and a
matrimonial offer, since Jones, junior, was swept away by his parents to
be wedded without delay to a consumptive heiress who had long pined
for his whiskers; and Count Posen, in his Souvenirs, was severer on
Blanche's one good deed than on the worst of her follies.

A few years after, when Blanche, then the fearless wife of a
regular-army officer, was helping Hope in the hospitals at Norfolk, she
would stop to shout with delight over the reminiscence of that stately
Jones equipage in mad career, amid the barking of dogs and the groaning
of dowagers. "After all, Hope," she would say, "the fastest thing I ever
did was under your orders."

XXI. A STORM.

THE members of the household were all at the window about noon, next
day, watching the rise of a storm. A murky wing of cloud, shaped like
a hawk's, hung over the low western hills across the bay. Then the hawk
became an eagle, and the eagle a gigantic phantom, that hovered over
half the visible sky. Beneath it, a little scud of vapor, moved by some
cross-current of air, raced rapidly against the wind, just above the
horizon, like smoke from a battle-field.

As the cloud ascended, the water grew rapidly blacker, and in half an
hour broke into jets of white foam, all over its surface, with an
angry look. Meantime a white film of fog spread down the bay from the
northward. The wind hauled from southwest to northwest, so suddenly
and strongly that all the anchored boats seemed to have swung round
instantaneously, without visible