Mrs. Bogardus, according to her wont at this hour, was composedly doing
nothing. The colonel could not make his retreat under cover of her real or
feigned absorption in any of the small scattering pursuits which distract
the female mind. When she read she read--she never "looked at books." When
she sewed she sewed--presumably, but no one ever saw her do it. Her mind
was economic and practical, and she saved it whole, like many men of
force, for whatever she deemed her best paying sphere of action.

It was a silence that crackled with heat! The colonel, wrathfully
perspiring in the glow of that impenitent stick, frowned at it like an
inquisitor. Presently Mrs. Bogardus looked up, and her expression softened
as she saw the energetic despair upon his face.

"Colonel, don't you always smoke after dinner?"

"That is my bad habit, madam. I belong to the generation that
smokes--after dinner and most other times--more than is good for us."
Colonel Middleton belonged also to the generation that can carry a
sentence through to the finish in handsome style, and he did it with a
suave Virginian accent as easy as his seat in the saddle. Mrs. Bogardus
always gave him her respectful attention during his best performances,
though she was a woman of short sentences herself.

"Don't you smoke in this room sometimes?" she asked, with a barely
perceptible sniff the merest contraction of her housewifely nostrils.

"Ah--h! Those rascally curtains and cushions! You ladies--women, I should
say--Moya won't let me say ladies--you bolster us up with comforts on
purpose to betray us!"