“Precisely; and who made him so entirely different?”

“Hush, Sir!  I’ve no time to hear such folly.  I, too, am going to make a clean breast of it, and confess that there was the least little sense of—­of—­of—­well, justice, in my mind, when I thought that Laura Magot who jilted you, who were so unfortunate, and with whom she might have been so happy—­”

Gerald Bennet dissented, with smiles and shaking head.

“Hush, Sir!  Any woman might have been.  That she should have led such a life with Boniface Newt, and have seen him ruined after all.  Poor soul! poor soul!”

“Which?” asked her husband.

“Both—­both, Sir.  I pity them both from my heart.”

“Thou womanest of women!” retorted her husband.  “Art thou, therefore, no saint because thou pitiest them?”

“No, no; but because it was not an unmixed pity.”

“At any rate, it is an unmixed goodness,” said her husband.

The restless glance, the glimmering uncertainty, had faded from his eyes.  He sat quietly on the sofa, swinging his foot, and with his head bent a little to one side over the limp cravat.

“Gerald,” said his wife, “let us go out, and walk in the moonlight too.”

CHAPTER LXX.

THE REPRESENTATIVE OF THE PEOPLE.

In a few moments they were sauntering along the street.  It was full and murmurous.  The lights were bright in the shop windows, and the scuffling of footsteps, more audible than during the day, when it is drowned by the roar of carriage-wheels upon the pavement, had a friendly, social sound.

“Broadway is never so pleasant as in the early evening,” said Mr. Bennet; “for then the rush of the day is over, and people move with a leisurely air, as if they were enjoying themselves.  What is that?”

They were going down the street, and saw lights, and heard music and a crowd approaching.  They came nearer; and Mr. Bennet and his wife turned aside, and stood upon the steps of a dwelling-house.  A band of music came first, playing “Hail Columbia!” It was surrounded by a swarm of men and boys, in the street and on the sidewalk, who shouted, and sang, and ran; and it was followed by a file of gentlemen, marching in pairs.  Several of them carried torches, and occasionally, as they passed under a house, they all looked up at the windows, and gave three cheers.  Sometimes, also, an individual in the throng shouted something which was received with loud hi-hi’s and laughter.

“What is it?” asked Mrs. Bennet.

“This is a political procession, my dear.  Look! they will not come by us at all; they are turning into Grand Street, close by.  I suppose they are going to call upon some candidate.  I never see any crowd of this kind without thinking how simple and beautiful our institutions are.  Do you ever think of it, Lucia?  What a majestic thing the popular will is!”