He spoke with a nervous rapidity, at variance with his usual imperturbable deliberateness of manner, and she thought she had never seen his eyes so restless and brilliant.

“I was unusually late, owing to the fact that the Governor and staff dined with Uncle Mitchell, and they lingered so long over their cigars and wine, that I was delayed in the drawing-room, waiting for them; consequently was very late in changing my dress.  We were sorry you were prevented from joining us.  Uncle pronounced the dinner a perfect success; and certainly Governor Glenbeigh was in his happiest mood, and particularly agreeable.”

“Given his hostess, and entourage, could he possibly have been less?  Rumor’s hundred tongues wag with the announcement, that his Excellency is no longer inconsolable for his wife’s death; and desires to testify to the happiness of conjugal relations, by a renewal of the sweet bondage; a curiously subtile compliment to the deceased.  If I may be pardoned the enormity of the heresy, I think Shakspeare blundered supremely, when he gave Iago’s soul to a man.  Diabolical cunning, shrewd malevolence pure and simple, armed with myriads of stings for hypodermic incisions that poison a man’s blood, should be appropriately costumed in a moss-green velvet robe, should wear frizzled bangs as yellow as yonder bouquet of Marechal Neils, so suggestive of the warning flag flying over pest-houses!”

“It is very evident you are not equally generous in surrendering the amiability of Timon, along with the depravity of Iago, to the arsenal of feminine weapons.  What corroding mildew of discontent has fallen from Mrs. Parkman’s velvet dress, and rusted the bright blade of your chivalry?”

“The very breath of Iago, filling my ears and firing my heart with the architectural details of her coveted ‘castle in Spain.’  Glenbeigh is her cousin.  The ladder of his preferment is set up before my eyes, and his Excellency springs up the rounds, from Governor to Senatorship, thence to a place in the Cabinet, certainly to an important foreign embassy; where, in the eternal fitness of things, somebody, somebody with tender brown eyes like a thrush’s, and the voice of a siren, and the red lips of Hebe—­will be invited to reign as l’ambassadrice!  If I am not as mad with jealous despair as Othello, attribute my escape either to a sublime faith in your adorable constancy and incorruptibility, or to my own colossal vanity, fatuous beyond absolution.”

He pressed her arm closer to his side, and covered with one hand the gloved fingers resting on his sleeve; then added: 

“You must permit me to congratulate you upon your beautiful toilette to-night.  The harmony of the dress, and the grace of the wearer leave nothing to be desired.  Although debarred the pleasure of dining with you, I had hoped to enter, at least, with the coffee, but the freight train upon which I returned, was delayed; and I had no choice but to await your arrival here.”