aughing; and Joe joined pleasantly in the laugh, and the event ceased
to be a grievance from that instant.

CHAPTER XVIII. MRS. MORRIS AS COUNSELLOR

The breakfast at the Villa' Caprini always seemed to recall more of
English daily life and habit than any other event of the day. It was
not only in the luxuriously spread table, and the sideboard arrayed with
that picturesque profusion so redolent of home, but there was that gay
and hearty familiarity so eminently the temper of the hour, and that
pleasant interchange of news and gossip, as each tore the envelope of
his letter, or caught some amusing paragraph in his paper.

Mrs. Penthony Morris had a very wide correspondence, and usually
contributed little scraps of intelligence from various parts of the
Continent. They were generally the doings and sayings of that cognate
world whose names require no introduction, and even those to whom they
are unfamiliar would rather hear in silence than own to the ignorance.
The derelicts of fashion are the staple of small-talk; they are
suggestive of all the little social smartness one hears, and of that
very Brummagem morality which assumes to judge them. In these Mrs.
Morris revelled. No paragraph of the "Morning Post" was too mysteriously
worded for her powers of interpretation; no asterisks could veil a name
from her piercing gaze. Besides, she had fashioned a sort of algebraic
code of life which wonderfully assisted her divination, and being given
an unhappy marriage, she could foretell the separation, or, with the
data of a certain old gentleman's visits to St. John's Wood, could
predict his will with an accuracy that seemed marvellous. As she sat,
surrounded with letters and notes of all sizes, she varied the tone
of her intelligence so artfully as to canvass the suffrage of every
listener. Now it was some piece of court gossip, some "scandal of Queen
Elizabeth," now a curious political intrigue, and now, again, some
dashing exploit of a young soldier in India. But whether it told of
good or evil fortune, of some deeply interesting event or some passing
triviality, her power of narrating it was considerable, as, with a
tact all her own, she selected some one especial individual as chief
listener. After a number of short notices of London, Rome, and Paris,
she tossed over several letters carelessly, saying,--

"I believe I have given you the cream of my correspondence. Stay, here
is something about your old sloop the '