“Cousin Dorothy, I have the honor to raise my glass to you,” I said.

“I drink your health, Cousin George,” she said, gravely—­“Benny, let that wine alone!  Is there no small-beer there, that you go coughing and staining your bib over wine forbidden?  Take his glass away, Ruyven!  Take it quick, I say!”

Benny, deprived of his claret, collapsed moodily into a heap, and sat swinging his legs and clipping the table, at every kick of his shoon, until my wine danced in my glass and soiled the table.

“Stop that, you!” cried Cecile.

Benny subsided, scowling.

Though Dorothy was at some pains to assure me that they had dined but an hour before, that did not appear to blunt their appetites.  And the manner in which they drank astonished me, a glass of wine being considered sufficient for young ladies at home, and a half-glass for lads like Harry and Sam.  Yet when I emptied my glass Dorothy emptied hers, and the servants refilled hers when they refilled mine, till I grew anxious and watched to see that her face flushed not, but had my anxiety for my pains, as she changed not a pulse-beat for all the red wine she swallowed.

And Lord! how busy were her little white teeth, while her pretty eyes roved about, watchful that order be kept at this gypsy repast.  Cecile and Harry fell to struggling for a glass, which snapped and flew to flakes under their clutching fingers, drenching them with claret.

“Silence!” cried Dorothy, rising, eyes ablaze.  “Do you wish our cousin Ormond to take us for manner-less savages?”

“Why not?” retorted Harry.  “We are!”

“Oh, Lud!” drawled Cecile, languidly fanning her flushed face, “I would I had drunk small-beer—­Harry, if you kick me again I’ll pinch!”

“It’s a shame,” observed Ruyven, “that gentlemen of our age may not take a glass of wine together in comfort.”

“Your age!” laughed Dorothy.  “Cousin Ormond is twenty-three, silly, and I’m eighteen—­or close to it.”

“And I’m seventeen,” retorted Ruyven.

“Yet I throw you at wrestling,” observed Dorothy, with a shrug.

“Oh, your big feet!  Who can move them?” he rejoined.

“Big feet?  Mine?” She bent, tore a satin shoe from her foot, and slapped it down on the table in challenge to all to equal it—­a small, silver-buckled thing of Paddington’s make, with a smart red heel and a slender body, slim as the crystal slipper of romance.

There was no denying its shapeliness; presently she removed it, and, stooping, slowly drew it on her foot.

“Is that the shoe Sir John drank your health from?” sneered Ruyven.

A rich flush mounted to Dorothy’s hair, and she caught at her wine-glass as though to throw it at her brother.

“A married man, too,” he laughed—­“Sir John Johnson, the fat baronet of the Mohawks—­”

“Damn you, will you hold your silly tongue?” she cried, and rose to launch the glass, but I sprang to my feet, horrified and astounded, arm outstretched.