I turned to Juno.  “Speaking of mutilation, I trust your nephew is better this evening.”

I was rejoiced by receiving a glare in response.  But still more joy was to come.

“An apology ought to help cure him a lot,” observed the Briton.

Juno employed her policy of not hearing him.

“Indeed, I trust that your nephew is in less pain,” said the poetess.

Juno was willing to answer this.  “The injuries, thank you, are the merest trifles—­all that such a light-weight could inflict.”  And she shrugged her shoulders to indicate the futility of young John’s pugilism.

“But,” the surprised Briton interposed, “I thought you said your nephew was too feeble to eat steak or hear poetry.”

Juno could always stem the eddy of her own contradictions—­but she did raise her voice a little.  “I fancy, sir, that Doctor Beaugarcon knows what he is talking about.”

“Have they apologized yet?” inquired the male honeymooner from the up-country.

“My nephew, sir, nobly consented to shake hands this afternoon.  He did it entirely out of respect for Mr. Mayrant’s family, who coerced him into this tardy reparation, and who feel unable to recognize him since his treasonable attitude in the Custom House.”

“Must be fairly hard to coerce a chap you can’t recognize,” said the Briton.

An et cetera now spoke to the honeymoon bride from the up-country:  “I heard Doctor Beaugarcon say he was coming to visit you this evening.”

“Yais,” assented the bride.  “Doctor Beaugarcon is my mother’s fourth cousin.”

Juno now took—­most unwisely, as it proved—­a vindictive turn at me.  “I knew that your friend, Mr. Mayrant, was intemperate,” she began.

I don’t think that Mrs. Trevise had any intention to ring for Daphne at this point—­her curiosity was too lively; but Juno was going to risk no such intervention, and I saw her lay a precautionary hand heavily down over the bell.  “But,” she continued, “I did not know that Mr. Mayrant was a gambler.”

“Have you ever seen him intemperate?” I asked.

“That would be quite needless,” Juno returned.  “And of the gambling I have ocular proof, since I found him, cards, counters, and money, with my sick nephew.  He had actually brought cards in his pocket.”

“I suppose,” said the Briton, “your nephew was too sick to resist him.”

The male honeymooner, with two of the et ceteras, made such unsteady demonstrations at this that Mrs. Trevise protracted our sitting no longer.  She rose, and this meant rising for us all.

A sense of regret and incompleteness filled me, and finding the Briton at my elbow as our company proceeded toward the sitting room, I said:  “Too bad!”

His whisper was confident.  “We’ll get the rest of it out of her yet.”

But the rest of it came without our connivance.

In the sitting room Doctor Beaugarcon sat waiting, and at sight of Juno entering the door (she headed our irregular procession) he sprang up and lifted admiring hands.  “Oh, why didn’t I have an aunt like you!” he exclaimed, and to Mrs. Trevise as she followed:  “She pays her nephew’s poker debts.”