aight
at his reason. He saw it and felt it. The hug of him was deferred to the
tender good-night to him in his basket at the foot of the ladies' beds.

On entering their spacious bed-chamber, they were so fatigued that
sleep appeared to their minds the compensating logical deduction. Miss
Dorothea suppressed a yawn, and inflicted it upon Miss Virginia, who
returned it, with an apology, and immediately had her sister's hand on
her shoulder, for, an attempted control of one of the irresistibles; a
spectacle imparting bitter shudders and shots to the sympathetic jawbones
of an observer. Hand at mouth, for not in privacy would they have been
guilty of exposing a grimace, they signified, under an interim smile,
their maidenly submission to the ridiculous force of nature: after
which, Miss Virginia retired to the dressing-room, absorbed in woeful
recollection of the resolute No they had been compelled to reiterate,
in response to the most eloquent and, saving for a single instance,
admirable man, their cousin, the representative of 'the blood,'
supplicating them. A recreant thankfulness coiled within her bosom at
the thought, that Dorothea, true to her office of speaker, had tasked
herself with the cruel utterance and repetition of the word. Victor's
wonderful eyes, his voice, yet more than his urgent pleas; and also, in
the midst of his fiery flood of speech, his gentleness, his patience,
pathos, and a man's tone through it all; were present to her.

Disrobed, she knocked at the door.

'I have called to you twice,' Dorothea said; and she looked a motive for
the call.

'What is it?' said Virginia, with faltering sweetness, with a terrible
divination.

The movement of a sigh was made. 'Are you aware of anything, dear?'

Virginia was taken with the contrary movement of a sniff. But the fear
informing it prevented it from being venturesome. Doubt of the pure
atmosphere of their bed-chamber, appeared to her as too heretic even for
the positive essay. In affirming, that she was not aware of anything,
her sight fell on Tasso. His eyeballs were those of a little dog that
has been awfully questioned.

'It is more than a suspicion,' said Dorothea; and plainly now, while
open to the seductions of any pleasing infidel testimony, her nose in
repugnance convicted him absolutely.

Virginia's nose was lowered a few inches; it inhaled and stopped midway.
'You must be mistaken, dear. He never... '

'But are you insensible to the...