in the new-established void.

The first of these words sounded, indeed, quite enormous, issuing as it
did from Juno's lips at our breakfast-table, when yesterday's meeting on
the New Bridge was investing my mind with many thoughts. She addressed
me in one of her favorite tones (I have met it, thank God! but in two
or three other cases during my whole experience), which always somehow
conveyed to you that you were personally to blame for what she was going
to tell you.

"I suppose you know that your friend, Mr. Mayrant, has resigned from the
Custom House?"

I was, of course, careful not to give Juno the pleasure of seeing that
she had surprised me. I bowed, and continued in silence to sip a little
coffee; then, setting my coffee down, I observed that it would be some
few days yet before the resignation could take effect; and, noticing
that Juno was getting ready some new remark, I branched off and spoke to
her of my excursion up the river this morning to see the azaleas in the
gardens at Live Oaks.

"How lucky the weather is so magnificent!" I exclaimed.

"I shall be interested to hear," said Juno, "what explanation he finds
to give Miss Josephine for his disrespectful holding out against her,
and his immediate yielding to Miss Rieppe."

Here I deemed it safe to ask her, was she quite sure it had been at the
instance of Miss Rieppe that John had resigned?

"It follows suspiciously close upon her arrival," stated Juno. She might
have been speaking of a murder. "And how he expects to support a
wife now--well, that is no affair of mine," Juno concluded, with a
washing-her-hands-of-it air, as if up to this point she had always
done her best for the wilful boy. She had blamed him savagely for not
resigning, and now she was blaming him because he had resigned; and
I ate my breakfast in much entertainment over this female acrobat in
censure.

No more was said; I think that my manner of taking Juno's news had been
perfectly successful in disappointing her. John's resignation, if it
had really occurred, did certainly follow very close upon the arrival of
Hortense; but I had spoken one true thought in intimating that I doubted
if it was due to the influence of Miss Rieppe. It seemed to me to the
highest degree unlikely that the boy in his present state of feeling
would do anything he did not wish to do because his ladylove happened to
wish it--except marry her! There was apparently no doubt that he would
do that. Did she