er tones when speaking of military heroes, she quitted
the table, saying: 'An argument between one at supper and another
handing plates, is rather unequal if eloquence is needed. As Pat said to
the constable, when his hands were tied, You beat me with the fists, but
my spirit is towering and kicks freely.'--Eight hundred? a thousand a
year, two thousand, are as nothing in the calculation of a householder
who means that the mistress of the house shall have the choicest of the
fruits and flowers of the Four Quarters; and Thomas Redworth had vowed
at his first outlook on the world of women, that never should one of
the sisterhood coming under his charge complain of not having them in
profusion. Consequently he was a settled bachelor. In the character
of disengaged and unaspiring philosophical bachelor, he reviewed the
revelations of her character betrayed by the beautiful virgin devoted to
the sanguine coat. The thrill of her voice in speaking of soldier-heroes
shot him to the yonder side of a gulf. Not knowing why, for he had no
scheme, desperate or other, in his head, the least affrighted of men
was frightened by her tastes, and by her aplomb, her inoffensiveness in
freedom of manner and self-sufficiency--sign of purest breeding: and by
her easy, peerless vivacity, her proofs of descent from the blood of
Dan Merion--a wildish blood. The candour of the look of her eyes in
speaking, her power of looking forthright at men, and looking the thing
she spoke, and the play of her voluble lips, the significant repose of
her lips in silence, her weighing of the words he uttered, for a moment
before the prompt apposite reply, down to her simple quotation of Pat,
alarmed him; he did not ask himself why. His manly self was not intruded
on his cogitations. A mere eight hundred or thousand per annum had no
place in that midst. He beheld her quietly selecting the position of
dignity to suit her: an eminent military man, or statesman, or wealthy
nobleman: she had but to choose. A war would offer her the decorated
soldier she wanted. A war! Such are women of this kind! The thought
revolted him, and pricked his appetite for supper. He did service by
Mrs. Pettigrew, to which lady Miss Merion, as she said, promoted him, at
the table, and then began to refresh in person, standing.

'Malkin! that's the fellow's name' he heard close at his ear.

Mr. Sullivan Smith had drained a champagne-glass, bottle in hand, and
was priming the successor to i