e were already the delicate relations of
a girl who did not know that she was a woman and a man who knew she was
beautiful and worthy. He was a man vigilant over himself, and the
poverty and menial estate of Joyce Basil were already insuperable
obstacles to marrying her, but still he was attracted by her
insensibility that he could ever have regarded her in the light of
marriage. "Who was her father, the Judge?" he used to reflect. The
Judge was a favorite topic with Mrs. Basil at the table.

"Mr. Reybold," she would say, "you commercial people of the Nawth can't
hunt, I believe. Jedge Basil is now on the mountains of Fawquear
hunting the plova. His grandfather's estate is full of plova."

If, by chance, Reybold saw a look of care on Mrs. Basil's face, he
inquired for the Judge, her husband, and found he was still shooting on
the Occequan.

"Does he never come to Washington, Mrs. Basil?" asked Reybold one day,
when his mind was very full of Joyce, the daughter.

"Not while Congress is in session," said Mrs, Basil. "It's a little too
much of the _oi polloi_ for the Judge. His family, you may not know,
Mr. Reybold, air oi the Basils of King George. They married into the
Tayloze of Mount Snaffle. The Tayloze of Mount Snaffle have Ingin blood
in their veins--the blood of Pokyhuntus. They dropped the name of
Taylor, which had got to be common through a want of Ingin blood, and
spelled it with a E. It used to be Taylor, but now it's Tayloze."

On another occasion, at sight of Joyce Basil cooking over the fire,
against whose flame her molded arms took momentary roses upon their
ivory, Reybold said to himself: "Surely there is something above the
common in the race of this girl." And he asked the question of Mrs.
Basil:

"Madame, how was the Judge, your husband, at the last advices?"

"Hunting the snipe, Mr. Reybold. I suppose you do not have the snipe in
the Nawth. It is the aristocratic fowl of the Old Dominion. Its bill is
only shorter than its legs, and it will not brown at the fire, to
perfection, unless upon a silver spit. Ah! when the Jedge and myself
were young, before his land troubles overtook us, we went to the
springs with our own silver and carriages, Mr. Reybold."

Looking up at Mrs. Basil, Reybold noticed a pallor and flush
alternately, and she evaded his eye.

Once Mrs. Basil borrowed a hundred dollars from Reybold in advance of
board, and the table suffered in consequence.

"The Judge," she had expl