nd Miss Caroline so charming that
several of them were torn with fresh pity and brought to the verge of
tears when they thought of her furniture.

Marcella Eubanks did cry on the way home and had to put down her green
barege veil. But that was for thinking of poor little Paul Dombey. She
was mourning him as a personal loss. Also must she have adored the
genius of a master who could thus move her from a calm that was
constitutional with every known Eubanks.

CHAPTER XVIII

IN WHICH THE GAME WAS PLAYED

The next _Argus_ said of Miss Caroline's afternoon that "the ladies
present one and all report a most enjoyable time." There was another
mysterious paragraph, too, farther down the column of "locals," which
proclaimed that "The immovable body has at last been struck by the
irresistible force and has failed to live up to its reputation. It moved
and moved so you could see it move. Another bubble exploded! We live in
a sensational age."

Now, while it is true that the ladies, "one and all," had spoken with
entire enthusiasm of their afternoon at the unpretentious home of my
neighbor, I, nevertheless, deemed it vital to hold plain speech with
that impulsive woman immediately. I saw, indeed, that I should have
acted after the incident of the mint juleps.

Solon Denney, who had experienced the hospitality of Miss Caroline, and
who could speak from a wider knowledge than our minister or the ladies
of the town, had once said:--

"Those mint juleps are simple, honest things. They taste injurious from
the start. But that punch--it's hypocritical. It steals into your brain
as a little child steals its rosebud hand into yours, beguiling you with
prattle; but afterwards--well, if I had the choice, I'd rather be
chloroformed and struck sharply with an axe. I'd be my old self again
sooner." Whereupon he would have written a guarded piece for the paper
about this had I not dissuaded him. But I saw that I must at once have
with Miss Caroline what in a later day came to be called "a
heart-to-heart talk"; and I forthwith summoned what valor I could for
the ordeal.

"I never dreamed--I never suspected--how _should_ I?" she murmured
pathetically, after my opening speech of a few simple but telling
phrases. She listened in genuine horror while I gave the reasons why she
might justly regard the call of our minister and her entertainment of
the Club as nothing short of adventures--adventures which she had
survived scathless no