And he gave the general snuff out of his box, and shook hands, and said something very good, as he got into his carriage, for he laughed a good deal, and touched the general’s ribs with the point of his gloved finger; and the general laughed too, moderately, and was instantaneously grave again, when the carriage whirled away.

CHAPTER XXIX.

SHOWING HOW POOR MRS. MACNAMARA WAS TROUBLED AND HAUNTED TOO, AND OPENING A BUDGET OF GOSSIP.

Some score pages back, when we were all assembled at the King’s House, my reader, perhaps, may not have missed our fat and consequential, but on the whole, good-natured acquaintance, Mrs. Macnamara; though, now I remember, he did overhear the gentle Magnolia, in that little colloquy in which she and Aunt Becky exchanged compliments, say, in substance, that she hoped that amiable parent might be better next day.  She was not there, she was not well.  Of late Mrs. Macnamara had lost all her pluck, and half her colour, and some even of her fat.  She was like one of those portly dowagers in Numbernip’s select society of metamorphosed turnips, who suddenly exhibited sympathetic symptoms of failure, grew yellow, flabby, and wrinkled, as the parent bulb withered and went out of season.  You would not have known her for the same woman.

A tall, pale female, dressed in black satin and a black velvet riding hood, had made her two visits in a hackney-coach; but whether these had any connexion with the melancholy change referred to, I don’t, at this moment, say.  I know that they had a very serious bearing upon after events affecting persons who figure in this true history.  Whatever her grief was she could not bring herself to tell it.  And so her damask cheek, and portly form, and rollicking animal spirits continued to suffer.

The major found that her mind wandered at piquet.  Toole also caught her thinking of something else in the midst of his best bits of local scandal; and Magnolia several times popped in upon her large mother in tears.  Once or twice Toole thought, and he was right, that she was on the point of making a disclosure.  But her heart failed her, and it came to nothing.  The little fellow’s curiosity was on fire.  In his philosophy there was more in everything than met the eye, and he would not believe Magnolia, who laughed at him, that she did not know all about it.

On this present morning poor Mrs. Macnamara had received a note, at which she grew pale as the large pat of butter before her, and she felt quite sick as she thrust the paper into her pocket, and tried to smile across the breakfast table at Magnolia, who was rattling away as usual, and the old major who was chuckling at her impudent mischief over his buttered toast and tea.