ended by her son,
and followed by her daughters, ornamented in all the taste of the reigning
fashions Doctor Ives and his wife, who came late from choice, soon
appeared, accompanied by their guest, and the dancing commenced, Denbigh
had thrown aside his black for the evening, and as he approached to claim
her promised hand, Emily thought him, if not as handsome, much more
interesting than Colonel Egerton, who just then passed them while leading
her sister to the set. Emily danced beautifully, but perfectly like a
lady, as did Jane; but Denbigh, although graceful in his movements and in
time, knew but little of the art; and but for the assistance of his
partner, he would have more than once gone wrong in the figure. He very
gravely asked her opinion of his performance as he handed her to a chair,
and she laughingly told him his movements were but a better sort of march.
He was about to reply, when Jarvis approached. By the aid of a pint of
wine and his own reflections, the youth wrought himself into something of
a passion, especially as he saw Denbigh enter, after Emily had declined
dancing with himself. There was a gentleman in the corps who unfortunately
was addicted to the bottle, and he had fastened on Jarvis as a man at
leisure to keep him company. Wine openeth the heart, and the captain
having taken a peep at the dancers, and seen the disposition of affairs,
returned to his bottle companion, bursting with the indignity offered to
his person. He dropped a hint, and a question or two brought the whole
grievance forth.

There is a certain set of men in every service who imbibe extravagant
notions that are revolting to humanity, and which too often prove to be
fatal in their results. Their morals are never correct, and the little
they have set loosely about them. In their own cases, their appeals to
arms are not always so prompt; but in that of their friends, their
perceptions of honor are intuitively keen, and their inflexibility in
preserving it from reproach unbending; and such is the weakness of
mankind, their "tenderness on points where the nicer feelings of a soldier
are involved, that these machines of custom, these thermometers graduated
to the scale of false honor, usurp the place of reason and benevolence,
and become too often the arbiters of life and death to a whole corps.
Such, then, was the confidant to whom Jarvis communicated the cause of his
disgust, and the consequences may easily be imagined. As he pa