his demeanor
remained intact even under the coquettish onslaughts of Mrs. Peck and
Mrs. Wheatley, who extracted from him with wheedling perseverance his
opinions on the State, the climate, and the country. Lord Hastings
replied with iron-bound and unsmiling brevity, his wide cold glance
resting with motionless attention upon the painted physiognomy of Mrs.
Peck and the broad and buxom one of Mrs. Wheatley, and his head turning
with dignified difficulty in his exceedingly high and tight collar, as
one and the other assailed him with queries. Meanwhile the object of his
journey, slowly moving her great fan of white ostrich feathers, looked
across the table at Faraday and made a little surreptitious _moue_.

The conversation soon became absorbed by the two married ladies,
Faraday, and Lord Hastings. Only the Ryans were silent, Genevieve now
and then throwing a lazy sentence into the vortex of talk, and Mrs. Ryan
being occupied in lending a proud ear to the coruscations of wit that
sparkled around the board, or in making covert gestures to the
soft-footed Mongols, who moved with deft noiselessness about the table.
Eddie Ryan, like his father, rarely spoke in society. In the glare of
the chandelier he sat like a strange uncomfortable guest, taking no
notice of any one. Toward the end of the feast he conversed in urgent
whispers with his mother--a conversation which ended in her
surreptitiously giving him her keys under the edge of the table. Before
coffee, Eddie left, on the plea of an important engagement, retiring
through the drawing-room, softly jingling the keys.

After this dinner, when Lord Hastings's presence had banished all his
doubts, when the young Englishman's attractive appearance had impressed
itself upon his jealous eye, and Genevieve's gentle indifference had
seemed to him but a modest form of encouragement. Faraday found but
little time to pay visits to the hospitable home of Barney Ryan.

The family friend that they had all so warmly welcomed and taken to
their hearts withdrew himself quietly but firmly from their cheerful
circle. When, at rare intervals, he did drop in upon them, he pleaded
important business engagements as the reason of his inability to accept
their numerous invitations to dinners and theater parties. After these
mendacious statements he would wend a gloomy way homeward to his Pine
Street boarding-house, and there spend the evening pretending to read,
and cursing the fate which had ever