tedious rustics."

"Hear the countess talk!" Tom rattled on, at the same time looking
affectionate admiration out of his mirthful eyes. "What a high and
mighty lady is yours, my lord Philip! I should like to know what the
Morrises, and Lind Murray, and the Philipse boys and girls, and our De
Lancey cousins, and the rest, would think to hear themselves called a
set of rustics."

"Why," says Phil, "beside her ladyship here, are they _not_ a set of
rustics?" With which he kissed her, and rose to go to his room.

"_Merci_, monsieur!" said Margaret, rising and dropping him a curtsey,
with the prettiest of glances, as he left the parlour.

She hummed a little French air, and went and ran her fingers up and
down the keys of the pianoforte, which great new instrument had
supplanted the old harpsichord in the house. Tom and I, standing at
the fireplace, watched her face as the candle-light fell upon it.

"Well," quoth Tom, "Phil is no prouder of his wife than I am of my
sister. Don't you think she grows handsomer every day, Bert?"

"'Tis the effect of happiness," said I, and then I looked into the
fireplace rather than at her. For I was then, and had been for long
months, engaged in the struggle of detaching my thoughts from her
charms, or, better, of accustoming myself to look upon them with
composure; and I had made such good success that I wished not to set
myself back in it. Eventually my success was complete, and I came to
feel toward her no more than the friendship of a lifelong comrade. If