“Yes, Patty is lovely,” she answered, thinking, as she reflected upon the eccentricities of love, how much too good he was for his wife.

Across the table Florrie’s voice was heard exclaiming:  “Now, you don’t mean it!  Well, I’m just as flattered as I can be!” and Gabriella surmised that she was completing her conquest of the judge.

“It’s wonderful how well she gets on with everybody,” observed Algernon.  “She’s never at a loss for a word, and I tell her if I had her ready wit, I’d be the greatest lawyer in Virginia to-day.  Have you noticed the way she is managing Judge Crowborough?”

“She always gets on well with men,” acquiesced Gabriella, though without the enthusiasm of Algernon.  “Do you remember what a belle she always was at the germans?” Though she was willing to admit that love was the ruling principle of life, it occurred to her that Algernon would be more amusing if he were less abundantly supplied with that virtue.

They talked of nothing but Florrie until the women went into the drawing-room; and there, from the safe haven of a window, Gabriella listened to Florrie’s ceaseless prattle about herself.  She was as egotistical, as effervescent, as she had been as a schoolgirl; and it seemed to Gabriella that she was hardly a day older.  Her eyes, of a grayish blue, like pale periwinkles, were as bold, as careless, as conquering in their glances; her hair was still as dazzling; her face, with its curious resemblance in shape to the face of a pretty cat, was still as frank, as naïve, as confiding in its innocence.  If she had changed at all, it was that, since her marriage to the silent Algernon, she had become even more talkative than she had been in her girlhood.  Her vivacity was as disturbing as the incessant buzzing of a June beetle.

“Well, you need never tell me again that you wouldn’t rather live in New York, Gabriella,” she fluted at parting, “because I shan’t believe a single word of it.  Why, we’ve been to the theatre every night for a fortnight, and we haven’t seen half the good plays that are going on.  Algy wanted to stay at Niagara Falls—­you know we went to Niagara Falls first—­but it was so deadly quiet I couldn’t stand it.  ’I don’t care if I am married,’ I said to Algy, ‘what I want is the theatre.’”

After she had gone, adoringly wrapped up by Algernon, Patty turned to her mother with a little malicious grimace: 

“I know it’s horrid to say she’s dreadful, mamma, but she really is.”

“Don’t, Patty, it isn’t kind, and, besides, she’s a friend of Gabriella’s.  What I can’t understand,” she added, “is how Bessie ever came out of Virginia, yet there were always a few like her.  You don’t remember Pussy Prime, do you?  Of course you don’t, she died long before your day, but she was just that loud, boisterous kind, and all the men were in love with her.”

“Well, if I’m ever born again,” remarked Gabriella, as she kissed Patty good-night, “I hope I’ll be born a fat blonde.  They always get taken care of.”