But Felise is rather reticent on the subject.
"I will tell you all I know," she says, with a pretty affectation of frankness. "That is not much. The Carlyles are going abroad next week and the colonel is going to put his wife at a convent school in Paris to finish her education and perfect herself in music. He told me that much this morning, and I did not ask him why he proposed taking such a singular step."
"You thought him so crazed by jealousy that he could hardly account for his whims in a rational manner, eh?" inquired one.
"It is monstrous!" says another. "Why, the girl was as finished and elegant in her manners as mortal could be. It were impossible to add another charm to her."
While Byron Penn quoted with enthusiasm:
"To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To smooth the ice; or add another hue
Unto the rainbow; or with taper light
To seek the beauteous eye of Heaven to garnish,
Were wasteful and ridiculous excess."
It was a nine days' wonder, and then it was over. People voted Colonel Carlyle a bear and a Bluebeard, and his lovely young bride a victim and martyr. They said that he was secluding her from the world because he was too jealous for the light of Heaven to shine upon her.
The young poet indited some charming verses for his favorite magazine: "To Those Blue Eyes Across the Sea," and then the gossip began to die out, and new subjects engrossed society's mind.
Months rolled on, and the Carlyle eclaircissement was almost forgotten, or at least but seldom named, even by those who had been the most interested at first.