Mrs. Aylett advanced a step, not more, and returned the bow that comprehended all present, with a pleased, not rapturous welcome.

“We were beginning to fear lest you might be wet,” she said, emulating his polite equanimity.  Genuine tact is always chameleon-like in quality.  “It rains quite fast, does it not?”

“The storm is increasing, but I experienced no inconvenience from it, thank you.”

He sat down in his favorite arm-chair, and spread his fingers before the fire.

“I am happy to see you so very much better”—­to Herbert.  “There were many kind inquiries for you at the court-house to-day.  Dr. Ritchie wanted to know if you had ever taken nux vomica for these neuralgic turns.  I invited him to come in with me and prescribe for you, but he said he must push on home, so we parted at the outer gate.”

So affable as almost to put others at their ease in his company, he chatted until supper was announced; regretted civilly Herbert’s inability to go to the table, and gave his sister his arm into the dining-room, Mrs. Aylett following in their wake.  If he did not eat heartily, he praised, in gentlemanly moderation, the viands selected by his consort for his delectation after his wet ride, and pleaded a late dinner as the reason of his present abstinence.  Then they adjourned to the apartment where they had left Mr. Dorrance, and the host produced his cigar-case.

“Mabel says that smoke never offends your olfactories, or affects your head unpleasantly, when you are suffering from this nervous affection,” he said to Herbert.

“On the contrary, it often acts as a sedative,” was the reply.

Winston lighted a cigar with an allumette from a bronze taper-stand—­a Christmas gift from his wife, which she kept supplied with fanciful spiles twisted and fringed into a variety of shapes; drew several long breaths to be certain that the fire had taken hold of the heart of the Havana, tossed the pretty paper into the embers, and resumed his seat in the chimney corner.

“A sedative is a good thing for people who allow their nerves to get out of gear,” he remarked, dryly and leisurely, puffing contentedly in the middle and at the end of the sentence.  “But he who does this subverts the order of the ruler aad the ruled.  I supposed I had nerves once, but it is an age since they have dared molest me.  I know that I had my impulses when I was younger.”

He stopped to fillip the ash forming upon the ignited end of his cigar, performing the operation with nicety, using the extreme tip of his middle-finger nail over the salver attached for the purpose to the bronze smoking-set.

“I obeyed one, above a dozen years ago.  I learned only to-day that it was rash and unwise, and to how much evil it may lead.”

“Not a very active evil, if you have just discovered it to be such.”

The speaker was his sister.  Herbert was motionless upon his couch.  Mrs. Aylett, in the lounging-chair at the opposite side of the hearth from her husband, was cutting the leaves of a new magazine he had brought from the post-office, and did not seem to hear his remark.