ed vigorously of Virginia and Louisa--secretly marvelling how
his hosts had brought themselves down to such fare. Isabel was dining
without apparently seeing anything amiss, and James attempted nothing
but a despairing toss of his chin, as he pronounced the carrots
underdone. After the first course there was a long interval, during
which Isabel and Louis composedly talked about the public meeting which
he had been attending, and James fidgetted in the nervousness of
hardly-restrained displeasure; but suddenly a frightful shrieking
arose, and he indignantly cried, 'That girl!'

'Poor Charlotte in her hysterics again,' said Isabel, moving off,
quickly for her, with the purple scent-bottle at her chatelaine.

'Isabel makes her twice as bad,' exclaimed James; 'to pet her with
eau-de-Cologne is mere nonsense. Some day I shall throw a bucket of
cold water over her.'

Isabel had left the door open, and they heard her softly comforting
Charlotte with 'Never mind,' and 'Lord Fitzjocelyn would not care,'
till the storm lulled. Charlotte crept off to her room, and Isabel
returned to the dinner-table.

'Well, what's the matter now?' said James.

'Poor Charlotte!' said Isabel, smiling; 'it seems that she trusted to
making a grand appearance with the remains of yesterday's pudding, and
that she was quite overset by the discovery that Ellen and Miss
Catharine had been marauding on them.'

'You don't mean that Kitty has been eating that heavy pudding at this
time of night?' cried James.

'Kitty eats everything,' was the placid answer, 'and I do not think we
can blame Ellen, for she often comes down after our dinner to find
something for the nursery supper.'

'Things go on in the most extraordinary manner,' muttered James.

'I suppose Charlotte misses Jane,' said Louis. 'She looks ill.'

'No wonder,' said James, 'she is not strong enough for such work. She
has no method, and yet she is the only person who ever thinks of doing
a thing properly. I wish your friend Madison would come home and take
her off our hands, for she is always alternating between fits of
novel-reading and of remorse, in which she nearly works herself to
death with running after lost time.'

'I should be sorry to part with her,' said Isabel; 'she is so quiet,
and so fond of the children.'

'She will break down some day,' said James; 'if not before, certainly
when she hears that Madison has a Peruvian wife.'

'There is no more to come,' said Isab