“Gone to ’ts m’o’r.  Gone East on shteamer, yesserday.  Waffed by fav’rin gales to suff’rin p’rent.  Thash so!”

Mrs. Starbottle did not move.  The colonel felt his chest slowly collapsing, but steadied himself against a chair, and endeavored to beam with chivalrous gallantry not unmixed with magisterial firmness upon her as she sat.

“Your feelin’s, m’m, do honor to yer sex, but conshider situashun.  Conshider m’or’s feelings—­conshider my feelin’s.”  The colonel paused, and flourishing a white handkerchief, placed it negligently in his breast, and then smiled tenderly above it, as over laces and ruffles, on the woman before him.  “Why should dark shed-der cass bligh on two sholes with single beat?  Chile’s fine chile, good chile, but summonelse chile!  Chile’s gone, Clar’; but all ish’n’t gone, Clar’.  Conshider dearesht, you all’s have me!”

Mrs. Starbottle started to her feet.  “You!” she cried, bringing out a chest note that made the chandeliers ring—­“You that I married to give my darling food and clothes—­you! a dog that I whistled to my side to keep the men off me—­you!”

She choked up, and then dashed past him into the inner room, which had been Carry’s; then she swept by him again into her own bedroom, and then suddenly reappeared before him, erect, menacing, with a burning fire over her cheekbones, a quick straightening of her arched brows and mouth, a squaring of jaw, and ophidian flattening of the head.

“Listen!” she said in a hoarse, half-grown boy’s voice.  “Hear me!  If you ever expect to set eyes on me again, you must find the child.  If you ever expect to speak to me again, to touch me, you must bring her back.  For where she goes, I go; you hear me!  Where she has gone, look for me.”

She struck out past him again with a quick feminine throwing-out of her arms from the elbows down, as if freeing herself from some imaginary bonds, and dashing into her chamber, slammed and locked the door.  Colonel Starbottle, although no coward, stood in superstitious fear of an angry woman, and, recoiling as she swept by, lost his unsteady foothold and rolled helplessly on the sofa.  Here, after one or two unsuccessful attempts to regain his foothold, he remained, uttering from time to time profane but not entirely coherent or intelligible protests, until at last he succumbed to the exhausting quality of his emotions, and the narcotic quantity of his potations.

Meantime, within, Mrs. Starbottle was excitedly gathering her valuables and packing her trunk, even as she had done once before in the course of this remarkable history.  Perhaps some recollection of this was in her mind; for she stopped to lean her burning cheeks upon her hand, as if she saw again the figure of the child standing in the doorway, and heard once more a childish voice asking, “Is it Mamma?” But the epithet now stung her to the quick, and with a quick, passionate gesture she dashed it away with