incontinently up the chimney
before him, he could not have looked more aghast. Reply was quite out of
his power. So sudden and unexpectedly was this charge of mine made that he
could only stare vacantly from one to the other; while I, warming with
my subject, and perhaps--but I'll not swear it--stimulated by a gentle
pressure from a soft hand near me, continued:--

"If he thinks for one moment that my attentions in this family are in any
way to be questioned by him, I can only say--"

"My dear O'Malley, my dear boy!" said the major, with the look of a
father-in-law in his eye.

"The spirit of an officer and a gentleman spoke there," said Mrs.
Dalrymple, now carried beyond all prudence by the hope that my attack might
arouse my dormant friend into a counter-declaration; nothing, however, was
further from poor Sparks, who began to think he had been unconsciously
drinking tea with five lunatics.

"If he supposes," said I, rising from my chair, "that his silence will pass
with me as any palliation--"

"Oh, dear! oh, dear! there will be a duel. Papa, dear, why don't you speak
to Mr. O'Malley?"

"There now, O'Malley, sit down. Don't you see he is quite in error?"

"Then let him say so," said I, fiercely.

"Ah, yes, to be sure," said Fanny. "Do say it; say anything he likes, Mr.
Sparks."

"I must say," said Mrs. Dalrymple, "however sorry I may feel in my own
house to condemn any one, that Mr. Sparks is very much in the wrong."

Poor Sparks looked like a man in a dream.

"If he will tell Charles,--Mr. O'Malley, I mean," said Matilda, blushing
scarlet, "that he meant nothing by what he said--"

"But I never spoke, never opened my lips!" cried out the wretched man, at
length sufficiently recovered to defend himself.

"Oh, Mr. Sparks!"

"Oh, Mr. Sparks!"

"Oh, Mr. Sparks!" chorussed the three ladies.

While the old major brought up the rear with an "Oh, Sparks, I must say--"

"Then, by all the saints in the calendar, I must be mad," said he; "but if
I have said anything to offend you, O'Malley, I am sincerely sorry for it."

"That will do, sir," said I, with a look of royal condescension at the
_amende_ I considered as somewhat late in coming, and resumed my seat.

This little _intermezzo_, it might be supposed, was rather calculated to
interrupt the harmony of our evening. Not so, however. I had apparently
acquitted myself like a hero, and was evidently in a white heat, in which I
could be fashioned into a