efore you?"

Even Tony--not the shrewdest, certainly, of observers--was struck by the
well-bred ease with which his friend conducted himself in a situation
of some difficulty, managing at the same time neither to offend the old
lady's susceptibilities nor sacrifice the respect he owed himself. In
fact, the presence of Alice recalled Skeffy, as if by magic, to
every observance of his daily life. She belonged to the world he knew
best,--perhaps the only one he knew at all; and his conversation at once
became as easy and as natural as though he were once more back in the
society of the great city.

Mrs. Maxwell, however, would not part with him so easily, and proceeded
to put him through a catechism of all their connections--Skeffingtons,
Darners, Maxwells, and Nevils--in every variety of combination. As
Skeffy avowed afterwards, "The 'Little Go' was nothing to it." With the
intention of shocking the old lady, and what he called "shunting her"
off all her inquiries, he reported nothing of the family but disasters
and disgraces. The men and women of the house inherited, according to
him, little of the proud boast of the Bayards; no one ever before
heard such a catalogue of rogues, swindlers, defaulters, nor so many
narratives of separations and divorces. What he meant for a shock turned
out a seduction; and she grew madly eager to hear more,--more even than
he was prepared to invent.

"Ugh!" said he at last to himself, as he tossed off a glass of sherry,
"I'm coming fast to capital offences, and if she presses me more I'll
give her a murder."

These family histories, apparently so confidentially imparted, gave
Alice a pretext to take Tony off with her, and show him the gardens.
Poor Tony, too, was eager to have an opportunity to speak of his friend
to Alice. "Skeffy was such a good fellow; so hearty, so generous, so
ready to do a kind thing; and then, such a thorough gentleman! If you
had but seen him, Alice, in our little cabin, so very different in every
way from all he is accustomed to, and saw how delighted he was with
everything; how pleasantly he fell into all our habits, and how nice his
manner to my mother. She reads people pretty quickly; and I 'll tell you
what she said,--'He has a brave big heart under all his motley.'"

"I rather like him already," said Alice, with a faint smile at Tony's
eagerness; "he is going to stop here, is he not?"

"I cannot tell. I only know that Mrs. Maxwell wrote to put him off."