with living blood in his veins, could help stooping to kiss before
her lips had shaped a reply.

"You wouldn't think it an appetizing morsel! But I listened with
interest to our unsophisticated Mabel's account of her Quixotic
expedition to what will, I foresee, be the haunted chamber of
Ridgeley in the next generation. Her penchant for adventure has, I
suspect, embellished her portrait of the hapless house-breaker."

"A common-looking tramp!" returned Winston, disdainfully. "As
villanous a dog in physiognomy and dress as I ever saw! Such an one
as generally draws his last breath where he drew the first--in a
ditch or jail; and too seldom, for the peace and safety of society,
finds his noblest earthly elevation upon a gallows. It is a
nuisance, though, having him pay this trifling debt of
Nature--nobody but Nature would trust him--in my house. There must
be an inquest and a commotion. The whole thing is an insufferable
bore. Ritchie has given him up, and gone to bed, leaving old Phillis
on the watch, with unlimited rations of whiskey, and a pile of
fire-wood higher than herself. But I did not mean that you should
hear anything about this dirty business. It is not fit for my
darling's ears. Mabel showed even less than her usual discretion in
detailing the incidents of her adventure to you."

Flattery of his sister had never been a failing with him, but, since
his marriage, the occasions were manifold in which her inferiority
to his wife was so glaring as to elicit a verbal expression of
disapproval. It was remarkable that Clara's advocacy of Mabel's
cause, at these times, so frequently failed to alter his purpose of
censure or to mitigate it, since, in all other respects, her