le wonder. At last,
during a pause in the general conversation, he addressed Royston
abruptly--there was a strange huskiness in his voice, and his lower lip
kept trembling--

"I heard from Naples this morning. My friend mentions having met Mrs.
Keene there."

The major looked up at the speaker with the cool, indifferent glance
that had often irritated him. "Indeed! I was not aware that my mother
had got so far south yet. She wrote last from Rome." The other tossed
off his glass with an unsteady hand, and set it down sharply. "I never
heard of your mother, sir," he said; "I was speaking of--_your wife_."

CHAPTER XVI.

To quarrel with a man over his cups, or in any wise to molest him in his
drink, is an offense against the proprieties that even the good-natured
Epicurean can not find it in his easy heart to palliate or pardon. On
this point he speaks mildly, but very firmly:

Natis in usum laetitiae scyphis
Pugnare, Thracum est. Tollite barbarum
Morem: verecundumque Bacchum
Sanguineis prohibete rixis.

The ghost of Banquo was an uncivilized spectre, or--strong as was the
provocation--it would have confronted Macbeth in any other place sooner
than the banqueting-hall. The worst deed in the life of a cruel, false
king was the setting on of the black bull's head before the doomed
Douglases; and perhaps Pope Alexander, though singularly exempt from all
vulgar prejudice, found it hard to obtain his own pontifical absolution
for the poisoned wine in which he pledged the Orsini and Colonna. In
these, and a hundred like instances, there was certainly the shadowy
excuse of political expediency or necessity; but what shall we say of
that individual who interrupts the harmony of a meeting solely to
gratify his own private pique or pleasure? Truly, with such enormities
Heaven "heads the count of crimes." I consider the most abominable act
of which Eris was ever guilty was the selection of that particular
moment for the production of the golden apple. If she was bound to make
herself obnoxious, she might have waited till the Olympians were sitting
in conclave, or at least at home again. It was infamous to disturb them
while doing justice to the talents of Peleus's _cordon-bleu_. I wish
very much that injured and querulous OEnone had met her somewhere on
the slopes of Ida, and "given her a piece of her mind."

On these grounds I venture to hope that all well-regulated readers will
concur with me in pronouncin