Thunderstruck, as though a bolt had smitten them individually in the head, this direction, delivered in a quiet voice of command not to be resisted, sent the two servants forth at the back-door. They were no sooner out of view than they addressed each other almost at the same moment, "My eyes! did you ever see such a queer old fellow as that!"
When Mrs. Carrack and her son turned, and found that the two young gentlemen in livery had actually vanished, the lady smiled a delicate smile of gentle scorn, and Mr. Tiffany, regarding his aged grandfather steadily, merely remarked, in a tone of most friendly and familiar condescension, "Baden-Baden wouldn't have done such a thing!"
The overpowering grandeur of the fashionable lady chilled the household, and there was little conversation till she addressed the widow Margaret.
"Hadn't you a grown up son, Mrs. Peabody?"
The widow was silent. Presently Mr. Carrack renewed the discourse.
"By the by," he said, "I thought I saw that son of yours—wasn't his name Elbridge, or something of that sort?—in New Orleans."
"Did you speak to him?" asked the Captain, flushing a little in the face.
"I observed he was a good deal out at elbows," Mr. Carrack answered, "and it was broad day-light, in one of the fashionable streets."
"Is that all you have to tell us of your cousin?" old Sylvester inquired.
"He is my cousin—much obliged for the information. I had almost forgotten that! Why ye-es—I couldn't help seeing that he went into a miserable broken-down house in a by-street—but had to get my moustache oiled for a Creole ball that evening, and couldn't be reasonably expected to follow him, could I?—Jehoshaphat!"