's
manner, and he put it all down to his own blundering tongue, which was
always placing his best friend either in a false or in an annoying
position before Mell. Out of these considerations he made haste to
subjoin:

"Ah, Mellville, you should have seen Devonhough how splendidly he
acquitted himself in our class plays at college!"

This was a pure offering from friendship's store. Honest Rube, with
his fine open countenance all aglow with enthusiasm for his friend and
joy in the presence of the woman he loved, looked the archetype of
hopeful young manhood, untouched, as yet, by sorrow or mistrust.
Regarded from an architectural standpoint, he had the sublime
simplicity and dignity of the Doric, which was just wherein he
differed from Jerome, who was a Corinthian column, delicately
chiselled, ornately moulded.

Mell remarked, in reply to this expression of lively admiration from
Rube, that she wished she could have seen Mr. Devonhough--or
something. Mr. Devonhough, with the expression of a man whose
self-respect will not admit of his bearing much more, said with an
impatient "Pshaw," that she needn't wish to have seen him, that this
good acting of his was all in Rube's eye, and nowhere else; that he
hated an actor, and that he never would act another part himself, as
long as he lived, not to oblige anybody, and so help him God!

After which, shadowed by clouds, beleaguered with dark thoughts, with
sombre fires of jealousy smoldering in his eye, and war-hounds of
anxiety gnawing at his vitals, he abruptly turned and left the
room--not with his usual deliberation.

And still Rube saw nothing.

"He's real cut up," said the sympathetic Rube, looking commiseratingly
after the friend of his bosom. "And all for what? Because a woman
never seems certain of her own mind. When judgment overtakes you women
what is to become of you all, anyhow--eh, Mell?"

Mell could hardly say; and Rube, dismissing Jerome from his mind for
the present, found other occupation. He had never seen Mell before in
full dress. He addressed himself _con amore_, and exclusively, for a
time, to the study of structural feminity and those marvels of nature
presented to the eye of the earnest investigator, in the shape of a
well-formed woman on the outside of a ball dress.

During this process Rube's sensations were indefinable.

Mell, preoccupied in thoughts of her own, hears, at length, his voice
dreamily, as a sound from afar, and looks up irrit