nd satisfaction.
Thenceforward, Alleghenia meant much to Colonel Broadcastle, and
Colonel Broadcastle considerably more than much to Alleghenia.

Something of all this went through the Lieutenant-Governor's mind during
the progress of the dinner. He sat at Mrs. Rathbawne's right, than which
nothing in the world could have been more cheerless, unless it was
sitting at Mrs. Rathbawne's left. But the good lady's habitual
complacency was plainly in abeyance, her customary volubility replaced
by a fidgety reserve. The dinner, as a social achievement, was a
distinct failure, save in so far as Mrs. Wynyard and Colonel Broadcastle
were concerned. Several months before, Mrs. Wynyard had frankly
announced that she had designs upon the Colonel. Latterly, Barclay had
begun to suspect the Colonel of having designs upon Mrs. Wynyard. Thirty
and sixty-five that looked forty-five--a widow and a widower! More
wonderful things had happened.

"If I were thirty years younger," Broadcastle was saying even now, as he
did full justice to the celery mayonnaise, "I should say we were made
for each other."

"Since two single people may be made for each other," laughed Mrs.
Wynyard, "I wonder if two married people can't be unmade for each other.
Perhaps that is just what has happened to us!"

"I'll think that over," replied the Colonel with mock gravity. "I don't
want to commit myself on so serious a hypothesis, without due
reflection."

They were the only ones who were thoroughly at ease. Barclay and
Natalie, unstrung by the events of the day, ate little and talked
listlessly. Dorothy, victim to an inward excitement which was half
happiness and half disappointment, chattered feverishly. Rathbawne was
wrapped in his own thoughts, and his wife, innocently unobservant of
emotional manifestations in any and every other, but pathetically
sensitive to the slightest evidence of mental perturbation in this
stern, kind man, between herself and whom existed a devotion dog-like in
its silence and intensity, watched his clouded face with an anxiety
which she made no effort to conceal. The dinner dragged hopelessly,
until she shook herself into a bewildered realization that it was over,
folded her napkin scrupulously, dusted a few crumbs from the black-satin
slope of her obsolete lap, and, followed by her daughters and Mrs.
Wynyard, left the men to their cordials and cigars.

The latter drew their chairs nearer, as the door closed, made little
cleari