ather insisted: 'mere skirmishes before this.'

They conversed in humorous undertones, each in turn seeming to turn over
the earth of some amusing reminiscence, so rapt, that as far as regarded
their perception of it, the assembly might have been nowhere. Perhaps,
consequently, they became observed with all but undivided attention.
My father's hand was on my shoulder, his head toward Captain DeWitt;
instead of subduing his voice, he gave it a moderate pitch, at which it
was not intrusive, and was musical, to my ear charming, especially when
he continued talking through his soft laughter, like a hunter that would
in good humour press for his game through links of water-nymphs.

Lady Denewdney's fan took to beating time meditatively. Two or
three times she kept it elevated, and in vain: the flow of their
interchangeing speech was uninterrupted. At last my father bowed to
her from a distance. She signalled: his eyelids pleaded short sight,
awakening to the apprehension of a pleasant fact: the fan tapped, and he
halted his march, leaning scarce perceptibly in her direction. The fan
showed distress. Thereupon, his voice subsided in his conversation, with
a concluding flash of animation across his features, like a brook that
comes to the leap on a descent, and he left us.

Captain DeWitt and I were led by a common attraction to the portico,
the truth being that we neither of us could pace easily nor talk with
perfect abandonment under eye-fire any longer.

'Look,' said he to me, pointing at the equipages and equestrians:
'you'll see a sight like this in dozens--dozens of our cities and towns!
The wealth of this country is frightful.'

My reply, addressed at the same time mentally to Temple at sea, was:

'Well, as long as we have the handsomest women, I don't care.'

Captain DeWitt was not so sure that we had. The Provencal women, the
women of a part of South Germany, and certain favoured spots of Italy,
might challenge us, he thought. This was a point I could argue on, or,
I should rather say, take up the cudgels, for I deemed such opinions
treason to one's country and an outrage to common sense, and I embarked
in controversy with the single-minded intention of knocking down the man
who held them.

He accepted his thrashing complacently.

'Now here comes a young lady on horseback,' he said; 'do you spy her?
dark hair, thick eyebrows, rides well, followed by a groom. Is she a
Beauty?'

In the heat of patriotism I de