“Why do you torment me so?  I’ll go, I say,—­leave town to-morrow,—­only I can’t with this horrid depot work!  What shall I do?  It’s too cruel of you, while Campbell is away in Ireland, too; and I have not a soul but you to ask advice of, for Valencia is as great a goose as I am;” and the poor little fellow buried his hands in his curls, and stared fiercely into the fire, as if to draw from thence omens of his love, by the spodomantic augury of the ancient Greeks; while Sabina tripped up and down the room, putting things to rights for the night, and enjoying his torments as a cat does those of the mouse between her paws; and yet not out of spite, but from pure and simple fun.

Sabina is one of those charming bodies who knows everybody’s business, and manages it.  She lives in a world of intrigue, but without a thought of intriguing for her own benefit.  She has always a match to make, a disconsolate lover to comfort, a young artist to bring forward, a refugee to conceal, a spendthrift to get out of a scrape; and, like David in the mountains, “every one that is discontented, and every one that is in debt, gather themselves to her.”  The strangest people, on the strangest errands, run over each other in that cosy little nest of hers.  Fine ladies with over-full hearts, and seedy gentlemen with over-empty pockets, jostle each other at her door; and she has a smile, and a repartee, and good, cunning, practical wisdom for each and every one of them, and then dismisses them to bill and coo with Claude, and laugh over everybody and everything.  The only price which she demands for her services is, to be allowed to laugh; and if that be permitted, she will be as busy, and earnest, and tender, as Saint Elizabeth herself.  “I have no children of my own,” she says, “so I just make everybody my children, Claude included; and play with them, and laugh at them, and pet them, and help them out of their scrapes, just as I should if they were in my own nursery.”  And so it befalls that she is every one’s confidant; and though every one seems on the point of taking liberties with her, yet no one does:  partly because they are in her power, and partly because, like an Eastern sultana, she carries a poniard, and can use it, though only in self-defence.  So if great people, or small people either (who can give themselves airs as well as their betters), take her plain speaking unkindly, she just speaks a little more plainly, once for all, and goes off smiling to some one else; as a hummingbird, if a flower has no honey in it, whirs away, with a saucy flirt of its pretty little tail, to the next branch on the bush.

“I must know more of this American,” said Scoutbush, at last.

“Well, he would be very improving company for you; and I know you like improving company.”

“I mean—­what has he to do with her?”

“That is just what I will not tell you.  One thing I will tell you, though, for it may help to quench any vain hopes on your part; and that is, the reason which she gives for not marrying him.”