little frown of resentment while he sent his hand
impetuously through his scant locks, standing them quite on end.

On the very lowest shelf were five imposing volumes in dignified black
and gold, bearing the simple inscription "Lives of the Saints--Rev. A.
Butler." Upon one of them, Mr. Worthington seized, opening it at
hazard. He had fallen upon the history of St. Monica, mother of the
great St. Austin--a woman whose habits it appears had been so closely
guarded in her childhood by a pious nurse, that even the quenching of
her natural thirst was permitted only within certain well defined
bounds. This mentor used to say "you are now for drinking water, but
when you come to be mistress of the cellar, water will be despised,
but the habit of drinking will stick by you." Highly interesting, Mr.
Worthington thought, as he brushed his hair all down again the right
way and seated himself the better to learn the fortunes of the good
St. Monica who, curiously enough, notwithstanding those early
incentives to temperance, "insensibly contracted an inclination to
wine," drinking "whole cups of it with pleasure as it came in her
way." A "dangerous intemperance" which it finally pleased Heaven to
cure through the instrumentality of a maid servant taunting her
mistress with being a "wine bibber."

Mr. Worthington did not stop with the story of Saint Monica. He lost
himself in those details of asceticism, martyrdom, superhuman
possibilities which man is capable of attaining under peculiar
conditions of life--something he had not yet "gone into."

The voices at the card table would certainly have disturbed a man with
less power of mind concentration. For Mrs. Worthington in this
familiar employment was herself again--_con fuoco_. Here was Mr.
Duplan in high spirits; his wife putting forth little gushes of
bird-like exaltation as the fascinations of the game revealed
themselves to her. Even Hosmer and Therese were drawn for the moment
from their usual preoccupation. Fanny alone was the ghost of the
feast. Her features never relaxed from their settled gloom. She played
at hap-hazard, listlessly throwing down the cards or letting them fall
from her hands, vaguely asking what were trumps at inopportune
moments; showing that inattentiveness so exasperating to an eager
player and which oftener than once drew a sharp rebuke from Belle
Worthington.

"Don't you wish we could play," said Ninette to her companion from her
comfortable perch