“Ruyven,” I said, sharply, “is it you who fling such a taunt to shame your own kin?  If there is aught of impropriety in what this man Sir John has done, is it not our affair with him in place of a silly gibe at Dorothy?”

“I ask pardon,” stammered Ruyven; “had there been impropriety in what that fool, Sir John, did I should not have spoke, but have acted long since, Cousin Ormond.”

“I’m sure of it,” I said, warmly.  “Forgive me, Ruyven.”

“Oh, la!” said Dorothy, her lips twitching to a smile, “Ruyven only said it to plague me.  I hate that baronet, and Ruyven knows it, and harps ever on a foolish drinking-bout where all fell to the table, even Walter Butler, and that slow adder Sir John among the first.  And they do say,” she added, with scorn, “that the baronet did find one of my old shoon and filled it to my health—­damn him!—­”

“Dorothy!” I broke in, “who in Heaven’s name taught you such shameful oaths?”

“Oaths?” Her face burned scarlet.  “Is it a shameful oath to say ’Damn him’?”

“It is a common oath men use—­not gentlewomen,” I said.

“Oh!  I supposed it harmless.  They all laugh when I say it—­father and Guy Johnson and the rest; and they swear other oaths—­words I would not say if I could—­but I did not know there was harm in a good smart ‘damn!’”

She leaned back, one slender hand playing with the stem of her glass; and the flush faded from her face like an afterglow from a serene horizon.

“I fear,” she said, “you of the South wear a polish we lack.”

“Best mirror your faults in it while you have the chance,” said Harry, promptly.

“We lack polish—­even Walter Butler and Guy Johnson sneer at us under father’s nose,” said Ruyven.  “What the devil is it in us Varicks that set folk whispering and snickering and nudging one another?  Am I parti-colored, like an Oneida at a scalp-dance?  Does Harry wear bat’s wings for ears?  Are Dorothy’s legs crooked, that they all stare?”

“It’s your red head,” observed Cecile.  “The good folk think to see the noon-sun setting in the wood—­”

“Oh, tally! you always say that,” snapped Ruyven.

Dorothy, leaning forward, looked at me with dreamy blue eyes that saw beyond me.

“We are doubtless a little mad, ... as they say,” she mused.  “Otherwise we seem to be like other folk.  We have clothing befitting, when we choose to wear it; we were schooled in Albany; we are people of quality, like the other patroons; we lack nothing for servants or tenants—­what ails them all, to nudge and stare and grin when we pass?”

“Mr. Livingston says our deportment shocks all,” murmured Cecile.

“The Schuylers will have none of us,” added Harry, plaintively—­“and I admire them, too.”

“Oh, they all conduct shamefully when I go to school in Albany,” burst out Sammy; “and I thrashed that puling young patroon, too, for he saw me and refused my salute.  But I think he will render me my bow next time.”