d him at
all, notwithstanding that she had been unquestionably the reigning belle
of the party--the one whose hand was claimed in every dance, and whose
company was sought in every ride and picnic. Marcia Fenton and Ella
Backus faded into nothingness when she was near, and they laughingly
complained to Richard that his wife had stolen all their beaux away, and
they wished he would make her do better.

"I wish I could," was his reply, spoken not playfully, but moodily, just
as he felt at the time.

He was not an adept in concealing his feelings, which generally showed
themselves upon his face, or were betrayed in the tones of his voice,
and when he spoke as he did of his wife the two young girls glanced
curiously at each other, wondering if it where possible that the grave
Judge was jealous. If charged with jealousy Richard would have denied
it, though he did not care to have Ethelyn so much in Harry Clifford's
society. Richard knew nothing definite against Harry, except that he
would occasionally drink more than was wholly in accordance with a
steady and safe locomotion of his body; and once since they had been at
the Stafford House, where he also boarded, the young lawyer had been
invisible for three entire days. "Sick with a cold" was his excuse when
he appeared again at the table, with haggard face and bloodshot eyes;
but in the parlor, and halls, and private rooms, there where whispers of
soiled clothes and jammed hats, and the servants bribed to keep the
secret that young lawyer Clifford's boots were carried dangling up to
No. 94 at a very late hour of the night on which he professed to have
taken his cold. After this, pretty Marcia Fenton, who, before Ethelyn
came to town, had ridden oftenest after the black horses owned by Harry,
tossed her curls when he came near, and arched her eyebrows in a manner
rather distasteful to the young man; while Ella Backus turned her back
upon him, and in his hearing gave frequent lectures on intemperance and
its loathsomeness. Ethelyn, on the contrary, made no difference in her
demeanor toward him. She cared nothing for him either way, except that
his polite attentions and delicate deference to her tastes and opinions
were complimentary and flattering, and so she saw no reason why she
should shun him because he had fallen once. It might make him worse, and
she should stand by him as an act of philanthropy, she said to Richard
when he asked her what she saw to admire in that drunk