ed words from her, dashed into "The Lost Chord" with a
swift and desperate fervor, as if to allay all alarm in the mind of this
sensitive guest. Eustace was at heart as earnestly well meaning as any
Eubanks that ever lived, and his vagaries in song were attributable
solely to a trusting nature capriciously endowed with a dash of the
artistic temperament. It was only a dash, however. Beyond doubt, had his
family but known, he could have sung the "Bedouin Love Song," and been
none the worse for it.

If Miss Caroline's eloquent pantomime at this time aroused a suspicion
that she had been maligned, as to her habits of drink, her behavior on a
subsequent evening, when Mrs. Judge Robinson entertained, left no one to
doubt it. There was music, too, on this occasion--described elsewhere as
"a gala occasion"--after Eustace had concluded his part of the
entertainment and gotten his lantern out of the way,--music by a quartet
consisting of Messrs. Fancett and Eubanks, first and second bass, and
Messrs. Updyke and G. Brown, first and second tenor. In excellent accord
these tenors and basses, so blameless in their living, lifted up their
voices and sang they "would that the wavelets of ocean were wavelets of
sparkling champagne!" It was a blithe and rippling morceau if one could
forget the well-nigh cosmic depravity of it; but Miss Caroline, it
appeared, was not able to forget. She confided as much to Marcella
Eubanks and Aunt Delia McCormick, intimating that while she was doubly
desirous to be pleased because of her position as an outsider, she was,
nevertheless, a silly old woman, encrusted with prejudice, and she could
not deny that she found this song _suggestive_. Her eyes glistened when
she said it, and Marcella felt like pinning a white ribbon to her then
and there.

Escorting Miss Caroline to her home that night, I listened to her
account of this colloquy and found myself wishing that matters had been
different. It seemed to me that I must ultimately become the victim of a
romantic passion for her, and I told her as much when we parted.

Gossip, the yellow-tongued dragon, had been tracked to its lair and done
to death, or at least that one of its heads had been smitten off which
babbled slander of Miss Caroline.

Thenceforth she and I were free to think upon other matters. And there
were these other matters in both our lives.

As to most of them we did not hold speech together. Our intimacy as yet
lay quite within a cir