resent amusement,
behind which lay a character of perhaps equal pride, if not equal
hardness. She was very beautiful, in the dark style which I cannot help
thinking has fallen into unmerited abeyance; and as she passed us I
could see that she was very graceful. She was dressed in a lady's
acceptance of the fashions of that day, which would be thought so
grotesque in this. I have heard contemporaneous young girls laugh at the
mere notion of hoops, but in 1870 we thought hoops extremely becoming;
and this young lady knew how to hold hers a little on one side so as to
give herself room in the narrow avenue, and not betray more than the
discreetest hint of a white stocking. I believe the stockings are black
now.

They both got by us, and I could see Mr. Glendenning following them with
longing but irresolute eyes, until they turned, a long way down the
saloon, as if to come toward us again. Then he hurried to meet them, and
as he addressed himself first to one and then to the other, I knew him
to be offering them his chair. So did my wife, and she said, "You must
give up your place too, Basil," and I said I would if she wished to see
me starve on the spot. But of course I went and joined Glendenning in
his entreaties that they would deprive us of our chances of dinner (I
knew what the second table was on the _Corinthian_); and I must say that
the elder lady accepted my chair in the spirit which my secret grudge
deserved. She made me feel as if I ought to have offered it when they
first passed us; but it was some satisfaction to learn afterwards that
she gave Mrs. March, for her ready sacrifice of me, as bad a half-hour
as she ever had. She sat next to my wife, and the young lady took
Glendenning's place, and as soon as we had left them she began trying to
find out from Mrs. March who he was, and what his relation to us was.
The girl tried to check her at first, and then seemed to give it up, and
devoted herself to being rather more amiable than she otherwise might
have been, my wife thought, in compensation for the severity of her
mother's scrutiny. Her mother appeared disposed to hold Mrs. March
responsible for knowing little or nothing about Mr. Glendenning.

"He seems to be an Episcopal clergyman," she said, in a haughty summing
up. "From his name I should have supposed he was Scotch and a
Presbyterian." She began to patronize the trip we were making, and to
abuse it; she said that she did not see what could have induced