gave a strange feverish
color to her cheek; and the poisoned perfume she would inhale gave a
strange new brightness to her eyes.

Rose sometimes looked on her and wondered; so innocent and healthy
and light-hearted in herself, she could not even dream of what was
passing. She had been brought up to love John as a brother, and opened
her heart at once to his wife with a sweet and loyal faithfulness.
When she told Mrs. Van Astrachan that Mrs. John Seymour was one of
her friends from Springdale, married into a family with which she had
grown up with great intimacy, it seemed the most natural thing in the
world to the good lady that Rose should want to visit her; that she
should drive with her, and call on her, and receive her at their
house; and with her of course must come Mrs. Follingsbee.

Mr. Van Astrachan made a dead halt at the idea of Dick Follingsbee. He
never would receive _that_ man under his roof, he said, and he never
would enter his house; and when Mr. Van Astrachan once said a thing
of this kind, as Mr. Hosea Biglow remarks, "a meeting-house wasn't
sotter."

But then Mrs. Follingsbee's situation was confidentially stated to
Lillie, and by Lillie confidentially stated to Rose, and by Rose to
Mrs. Van Astrachan; and it was made to appear how Dick Follingsbee had
entirely abandoned his wife, going off in the ways of Balaam the son
of Bosor, and all other bad ways mentioned in Scripture, habitually
leaving poor Mrs. Follingsbee to entertain company alone, so that he
was never seen at her parties, and had nothing to do with her.

"So much the better for them," remarked Mr. Van Astrachan.

"In that case, my dear, I don't see that it would do any harm for you
to go to Mrs. Follingsbee's party on Rose's account. I never go to
parties, as you know; and I certainly should not begin by going there.
But still I see no objection to your taking Rose."

If Mr. Van Astrachan had seen objections, you never would have caught
Mrs. Van Astrachan going; for she was one of your full-blooded women,
who never in her life engaged to do a thing she didn't mean to do:
and having promised in the marriage service to obey her husband, she
obeyed him plumb, with the air of a person who is fulfilling the
prophecies; though her chances in this way were very small, as Mr. Van
Astrachan generally called her "ma," and obeyed all her orders with a
stolid precision quite edifying to behold. He took her advice always,
and was often heard na