“‘Uncle Amos,’ I said to him, ’we’ve been together thirty years, but we’ve got to part.  You’re a drunkard and a thief and a worthless darky all round, and you’ve lived on my place ever since the war without doing a lick of work for your keep.  I’ve stood it as long as I can, but there’s an end to human endurance.  Yes, Amos, the time has come for us to part.’

“Hi!  Marse Beverly,’ said the old rascal, ’whar you gwine?”

“Capital!” ejaculated the judge softly.  “Capital!” And he added for Gabriella’s ear:  “Buffington tells the best negro stories of any man I know.  Ought to have heard him at the club the other night.”

Gabriella did not answer; Cousin Jimmy’s story had made her think of Cousin Jimmy, with his soft heart and his dark shining eyes like the eyes of a good and gentle dog.  Then she thought of her mother, and reminded herself that she must ask George when they were to begin the hunt for an apartment.  He had said they were very hard to find when you wanted them.

Another hush fell, and Colonel Buffington was just beginning a second story—­one of Uncle Meriweather’s this time—­when George came in from the drawing-room, and after a murmured apology, took his seat between Patty and Mrs. Hamilton.

“That’s a handsome boy,” said the judge in a husky whisper to Gabriella, “but he hasn’t much to say for himself, has he?”

His manner of playful intimacy conveyed the impression that the secret understanding between them did not include Gabriella’s husband.  George was an outsider, but this hideous old man, with his curious repelling suggestion of over-ripeness, as of fruit that is beginning to rot at the core, was the dominant personality in her mind at the moment.  She wondered if he knew how repulsive he was, and while she wondered, the judge, unaware of his tragic plight, went on eating lobster with unimpaired relish.  His importance, founded upon a more substantial basis than mere personal attraction, had risen superior not only to morality, but to the outward failings of the flesh.  Had he been twice as repulsive, she realized that his millions would have commanded a respect denied to both beauty and virtue.

“I wonder how any woman can stand him,” mused Gabriella.  Then, glancing across the table at Mrs. Crowborough, she realized something of the amazing insensibility of the more ethereal sex.  No man, not even in the last extremity, could have loved a woman as ugly as Judge Crowborough was.  The roughest man would have had sufficient esthetic sense to have been shocked into revolt; yet a woman, a refined and intelligent woman, had married the judge and survived it.  She appeared now, not only expressionless and unrevolted, but filled with a healthy zest for social reforms and the spiritual welfare of girl orphans.

“Well, I’ve learned something of life to-night,” thought Gabriella while she watched her.

Later in the evening, when she passed into the drawing-room, with Mrs. Crowborough, bleak, unbending, and trailing her chains of jet, she comforted herself again with the reflection that what she was “seeing” might not be particularly exciting, “but it was life.”