"Bound, Sir? Did you have to bind her?" asked Mrs. Dinwiddie, with a throb of maternal solicitude.
"You shall see, Madam."
He threw open the door at the head of the landing, and they entered a stately room, where some thirty or forty ladies and gentlemen seemed to be assembled. Mrs. Dinwiddie drew away her arm and almost swooned with amazement and consternation.
At the front end of the apartment, before a gorgeous mirror, stood Barbara and Captain Penrose. A veil and a bunch of orange-blossoms had been added to the young lady's coiffure. At her side stood a handsome old gentleman, with bright, affectionate eyes, (very much like the Captain's,) who seemed to regard her with a gratified look. On the side of Penrose stood—horrors!—Mr. Dinwiddie himself, a smile of fiendish exultation on his face; while a gentleman with a white cravat and a narrow collar to his coat, evidently an Episcopal clergyman, went up and shook hands with Barbara, and then mingled with the rest of the company.
A middle-aged gentleman, whom the guests accosted as Mr. Carver, drew near to Dinwiddie, and said,—
"Now introduce me to your wife."
Dinwiddie took his arm, and, leading him to where the lady stood, said,—
"Wife, this is my old friend Carver, of whom you have so often heard me speak. Yonder stands your daughter, Mrs. Penrose, waiting for your maternal kiss of congratulation."
Mrs. Dinwiddie debated with herself a moment whether to shriek, to fall into hysterics, to explode in a philippic, or to rush from observation. Her husband, seeing her hesitation, took her by the hand and led her into an unoccupied room. A veil must be dropped upon the connubial interview which then and there took place.
Suffice it to say, that, when she came forth leaning on the arm of Mr. Dinwiddie, it was with the air of one who has made up her mind to make the best of a case of necessity,—an air very much like that, I fancy, with which the South will yet take the arm of its consort, the North. She saw there was no longer any chance for another flank movement.