Colonel Carlyle keeps the peace for several days. He finds that he has overstepped the mark and that it will take careful management to regain his lost ground in his wife's regard. Bonnibel, though she married him without a spark of love, has yet given him a very frank and tender regard and esteem until now. She has always thought him a perfect gentleman, a model of courtesy and propriety, and as such she has given him all that was left in her heart to give—the reverence and affection of a dutiful daughter. Now, without a moment's warning, her ideal has fallen from the proud pedestal where she had placed it—its shattered fragments bestrewed the ground, and she knows, if he does not, that the broken image can never be restored.

He has deceived her, she tells herself bitterly, but now that he has won her, the mask of courtliness is laid aside, and he shows the iron hand that was hidden beneath the velvet glove.

But a few short weeks had fled, and he begins to play the tyrant already.

Her passionate, undisciplined nature rises up in hot rebellion against his injustice. The foolish jealousy of his old age appears very contemptible to her youthful eyes. She does not try to excuse it to herself. A great revulsion of feeling comes over her, chilling the gentle growth of tenderness and gratitude in her heart. Her manner grows cold, reserved, almost offensively haughty.

Ere this first cloud on the matrimonial horizon clears away the grand ball of the season comes off. The gay visitors at Long Branch dance every night, but this is to be the most brilliant affair of any—a "full dress affair" is what the ladies call it—meaning to say that they wear their finest dresses and costliest jewels—the gentlemen likewise.

The night is cloudless, balmy, beautiful—such nights as we have in the last of July when the moon is full and Heaven martials its hosts of stars in the illimitable canopy above. The spacious ball-room is thronged with revelers. The dreamy, passionate strains of waltz-music float out upon the air, filling it with melody.

Standing beside a window is Colonel Carlyle, in elegant evening[Pg 67] dress, looking very stately and distinguished despite his seventy years. Leaning on his arm is Felise Herbert, looking radiant in rose-colored satin and gauze, with a diamond fillet clasping her dark hair, and diamonds shining like dew on her bare throat and rounded arms. Smiles dimple her red lips as she watches the animated scene about her, and her dark eyes shine like stars. Her companion thinks that he never saw her half so handsome before as she hangs on his arm and chatters airy nothings in his ears.

"Look at our little Bonnibel," she says, in a tone of innocent amusement; "is she not a demure little coquette? She looks like a veritable snow-maiden, as cold and as pure, yet she has young Penn inextricably prisoned in her toils, and everyone knows it—no one better than herself."

His glance follows hers across the room to where his young wife stands a little outside the giddy circle of waltzers, leaning on the arm of a handsome, dreamy-looking youth, and despite the jealous pang that thrills him at Felise's artful speech, his heart throbs with a great love and pride at her exceeding beauty.

She looks like a snow-maiden, indeed, as her enemy says. She wears costly white lace over her white silk, and her cheeks and brow, her arms and shoulders are white as her dress. Colonel Carlyle's wedding gift, a magnificent set of diamonds, adorns her royally. There is not a flower about her, nothing but silk and laces and costly gems, yet withal, she makes you think of a lily, she looks so white, and cold, and pure in the whirl of rainbow hues around her.

Her companion bends toward her, speaking earnestly, yet she listens with such apparent indifference and almost ennui that if that be coquetry at all it can surely be characterized by no other term than that of Felise—"demure."

"I thought that Penn's loves were all ideal ones," the colonel says, trying to speak carelessly as he watches his wife's companion closely. "To judge from his latest volumes of poems, the divinities of his worship are all too ethereal to tread this lower earth."

Felise laughs significantly as her companion ceases to speak.

"Byron Penn, despite the ethereal creatures of his brain, is not proof against mortal beauty," she says. "Remember, Colonel Carlyle, that angels once looked down from Heaven and loved the women of earth."

"He is a graceful waltzer," her companion returns, as the young poet circles the waist of the snow-maiden with one arm and whirls her into the mazes of the giddy, breathless waltz.

"Very," says Felise, watching the graceful couple as they float around the room, embodying the very poetry of motion.

She is silent a moment, then looks up into her companion's face with a slightly curious expression.

"Pardon my question," she says, thoughtfully; "but do you quite approve of married women waltzing with other men than their husbands?"

[Pg 68]

He starts and looks at her sharply. The innocent deference and unconsciousness of her voice and face are perfect.

"Since you ask me," he says, slowly, "I may say that upon mature consideration I might think it was not exactly comme il faut. Yet I have really never before given a second thought to the subject. It is quite customary, you know, and it seems even more excusable in my wife than other women, since I never waltz myself, and she would be compelled to forego that pleasure entirely unless she shared it with others."

"Oh, pray do not think that I have any reference to Bonnibel," exclaimed Felise, hurried and earnestly, "I was speaking altogether in the abstract. Yet I fully agree with you that your wife would be more excusable for many little errors of head and heart than most women. She is scarcely more than a child, and has never had the proper training to fit her for her present sphere. Her uncle was culpably indulgent to her, and hated to force her inclination, which was very adverse to study or application of any kind. Consequently our little Bonnibel, though beautiful as a dream, is little more than an unformed child. She should be in the school-room this minute."

Every word is spoken with such a pretty air of excusing and defending the young wife's errors, and condemning her dead uncle as their cause, that Colonel Carlyle is entirely deceived. He did not know that Bonnibel was so neglected and unformed before, but he takes it on trust since Felise is so confident of it, and the thought rankles bitterly in his proud heart. But he passes over the subject in silence and returns to the primal one.

"So you would not, as a rule, Miss Herbert, commend the practice of married women waltzing with other men than their husbands?"

She drops her eyes with a pretty air of mingled confusion and earnestness.

"Perhaps you will call me prudish," she says, "or perhaps I may be actuated by the more ignoble passion of jealousy; but I have always felt that were I a man it would be insupportable shame and agony for me to see my wife, whom I loved and revered as a being little lower than an angel, whirled about a common ball-room in the arms of another, while the gaping public nodded and winked."

She saw a look of shame and pain cross his face as his eyes followed the white figure floating round the room in the clasp of Byron Penn's arms.

"I suppose there are not many women who feel as strongly on that subject as you do," he says, slowly.

"Oh, dear, no, nor men either, or they would not permit their wives such license," is the quick reply.

The waltz-music ceases with a bewilder............