ty ranged themselves around the fire, its glow
beginning to be welcome in the increasing chill of the evening.
Ordinarily, this was a household of hilarious temperament. Life had been
good to the Briscoes, and they loved it. They were fond of rich viands,
old wines, genial talk, good stories, practical jests, music, and sport;
the wife herself being more than a fair shot, a capital whip, and a
famous horsewoman. Even when there was no stranger within the gates, the
fires would flare merrily till midnight, the old songs echo, and the
hours speed away on winged sandals. But this evening neither host nor
hostess could originate a sentence in the presence of what seemed to
their sentimental persuasions the awful tragedy of two hearts. Indeed,
conversation on ordinary lines would have been impossible, but that Bayne
with an infinite self-confidence, as it seemed to Mrs. Briscoe, took the
centre of the stage and held it. All Bayne's spirit was up! The poise and
reserve of his nature, his habit of sedulous self-control, were
reasserted. He could scarcely forgive himself their momentary lapse. He
felt it insupportable that he should not have held his voice to normal
steadiness, his pulses to their wonted calm, in meeting again this woman
who had wrought him such signal injury, who had put upon him such
insufferable indignity. Surely he could feel naught for her but the
rancor she had earned! From the beginning, she had been all siren, all
deceit. She was but the semblance, the figment, of his foolish dream, and
why should the dream move him still, shattered as it was by the torturing
realities of the truth? Why must he needs bring tribute to her powers,
flatter her ascendency in his life, by faltering before her casual
presence? He rallied all his forces. He silently swore a mighty oath that
he at least would take note of his own dignity, that he would deport
himself with a due sense of his meed of self-respect. Though with a
glittering eye and a strong flush on his cheek, he conserved a deliberate
incidental manner, and maintained a pose of extreme interest in his own
prelection as, seated in an arm-chair before the fire he began to talk
with a very definite intention of a quiet self-assertion, of absorbing
and controlling the conversation. He described at great length the
incidents of his trip hither, and descanted on the industrial and
political conditions of east Tennessee. This brought him by an easy
transition to an analysi