"Good-night," he replied, with his young, gracefully-awkward bow.
She fully expected to hear his footstep pursue the chairman, for she had not been able to refrain from throwing her utmost fascination into that parting look. But nothing broke the silence of the parade save the measured slouching tramp of the bearers.
At once disappointed and relieved, she threw herself back in her seat.
"What, not a spark left," said she, "of the fine flame 'twas so easy to kindle this morning! 'Tis the very type of the odious British husband. Let him be but sure of you, and the creature struts as confident of his mastery as the cock among his hens. Lord!" she shuddered, "what an escape I have had! We women are apt to fancy that very young men are like very young peas, the greener, the tenderer, the better; whereas," said the lady, with a sigh, "they are but like young wine, crude where we look for strength, all head and no body, and vastly poor upon the palate."
She sighed again, and closed her eyes, waiting for the moment of the impending catastrophe with a delicate composure.
In truth, Mr. O'Hara conducted the performance with so much brio as to convince Mistress Bellairs that he must have had previous experience of the kind.
At the dark appointed corner the two muffled individuals who, each selecting his own astonished chairman, enlaced him with overwhelming brotherly affection, seemed such thorough-paced ruffians in the dim light, that Mistress Kitty found it quite natural to scream—and even had some difficulty in keeping her distressful note down to the pitch of necessary discretion.
And her heart fluttered with a sensation of fear, convincing enough to produce quite a delightful illusion, when she found herself bodily lifted out of her nest and rapidly carried through the darkness in an irresistibly close and strong embrace.
"Oh, oh, oh!" cried the lady, in a modulated sequence of little shrieks.
"Merciful heavens!" she thought to herself, with a great thump of the heart, astonished at her ravisher's silence, "what if it should be someone else after all?"