“Oh,” said Mrs. Annandale, fairly rebuked. “Oh—ah—He has that reputation, to be sure!” Then recovering herself and mindful of the presence of Mervyn: “And remember, girl, nobody but the sinner ever doubts it—the depraved sinner! Never—never let me hear of your doubting it!”
She tossed up her chin with her head-dress aloft with something of a pose, as if she herself had preached the little sermon. Then she turned smoothly to Mervyn, with her best airy grace somewhat shivered as she quaked before inconsiderable flashes of lightning—“If you will excuse me I will return, after taking a dose of that Indian remedy for the nerves which was recommended so highly to dear Brother.”
Mervyn, remembering the curious knowledge of toxicology which the Indians possessed and their extraordinary skill in distilling vegetable poisons, ventured to remonstrate.
“Dear madam,” he said, still standing beside the table where he was waiting to hand her to the door, “have a care what you drink.”
“I might say that to you—if the decanter were on the table,” she retorted, with her customary sparkle and smile, which a sudden flash distorted into a grimace before she had finished speaking.
“True,—only too true, and especially on the frontier,” assented Mervyn, showing his susceptibility to her pleasantry by a formal smile, something really in the manner of the lay-figure, “but some acquaintance with the herbal remedies is essential to safety, and—pardon me—the only Indian remedy that Captain Howard uses is bullets.”
“For his own nerves—” began the lady.
“The decanter,”—Mervyn laughed, a trifle abashed.
“Dear Aunt,” Arabella struck in, somewhat alarmed, “pray be careful.”
She had been standing most of the time since the tempest began to rage, one hand resting on the back of the chair beside her, the other lifted to the high mantel-piece. Her face was pale and grave, now and then she shuddered at the sinister white glister of the lightning. She looked tall and stately in her silver-shotted shoaling gray silk, glimmering in the shadow and sheen of the fire, and now and then of a transcendent dazzling whiteness in the fugitive flashes of the lightning. Mervyn had longed to reassure her with a word, a look, for he divined her fright, and even—so does love extend the sympathies—the nervous shock that the mere flarings and uproar of the tempest must inflict on more delicate sensibilities than those of a frontier soldier, but Mrs. Annandale’s demands upon his attention had absorbed his every faculty. His heart melted within him at her next words.