ppened."

"If--if"-- Mary sat up as straight as a dart, the corners of her
mouth twitching so that she could scarcely shape a word,--"if--if I'd
been there, I'd have made you _whip_ him!" She flouted her handkerchief
out of her pocket, buried her face in his neck, and sobbed like a child.

"Oh!" exclaimed the tearful John, holding her away by both shoulders,
tossing back his hair and laughing as she laughed,--"Oh! you women!
You're all of a sort! You want us men to carry your hymn-books and your
iniquities, too!"

She laughed again.

"Well, of course!"

And they rose and drew up to the board.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE DOCTOR DINES OUT.

On the third day after these incidents, again at the sunset hour, but in
a very different part of the town, Dr. Sevier sat down, a guest, at
dinner. There were flowers; there was painted and monogrammed china;
there was Bohemian glass; there was silver of cunning work with linings
of gold, and damasked linen, and oak of fantastic carving. There were
ladies in summer silks and elaborate coiffures; the hostess, small,
slender, gentle, alert; another, dark, flashing, Roman, tall; another,
ripe but not drooping, who had been beautiful, now, for thirty years;
and one or two others. There were jewels; there were sweet odors. And
there were, also, some good masculine heads: Dr. Sevier's, for instance;
and the chief guest's,--an iron-gray, with hard lines in the face, and a
scar on the near cheek,--a colonel of the regular army passing through
from Florida; and one crown, bald, pink, and shining, encircled by a
silken fringe of very white hair: it was the banker who lived in St.
Mary street. His wife was opposite. And there was much high-bred grace.
There were tall windows thrown wide to make the blaze of gas bearable,
and two tall mulattoes in the middle distance bringing in and bearing
out viands too sumptuous for any but a French nomenclature.

It was what you would call a quiet affair; quite out of season, and
difficult to furnish with even this little handful of guests; but it was
a proper and necessary attention to the colonel; conversation not too
dull, nor yet too bright for ease, but passing gracefully from one
agreeable topic to another without earnestness, a restless virtue, or
frivolity, which also goes against serenity. Now it touched upon the
prospects of young A. B. in the demise of his uncle; now upon the
probable seriousness of C. D. in his attentions to E. F.; now u