"Beautiful Lavinia!" he was saying, just as we turned the corner.
"Sister Latchley!" cried Hyams, "what is the meaning of all this?"
"Rather let me ask, brother Hyams," said the Latchley in unabashed serenity, "what means this intrusion, so foreign to the time, and so subversive of the laws of our society?"
"Shall I pound him, Lavinia?" said Rogers, evidently anxious to discharge a slight modicum of the debt which he owed to the Jewish fraternity.
"I command—I beseech you, no! Speak, brother Hyams! I again require of you to state why and wherefore you have chosen to violate the fundamental rules of the Agapedome?"
"Sister Latchley, you will drive me mad! This young man has not been ten minutes in the house, and yet I find him scampering after you like a tom-cat, and knocking down Adoniram because he came in his way, and you are apparently quite pleased!"
"Is the influence of love measured by hours?" asked the Latchley in a tone of deep sentiment. "Count we electricity by time—do we mete out sympathy by the dial? Brother Hyams, were not your intellectual vision obscured by a dull and earthly film, you would know that the passage of the lightning is not more rapid than the flash of kindled love."
"That sounds all very fine," said Hyams, "but I shall allow no such doings here; and you, in particular, Sister Latchley, considering how you are situated, ought to be ashamed of yourself!"
"Aaron, my man," said Rogers of ours, "will you be good enough to explain what you mean by making such insinuations?"
"Stay, my Lord," said I; "I really must interpose. Mr Hyams is about to explain."