The next evening my cousin explained his absence.  He had made the acquaintance of some distinguished literary gentlemen, who had invited him to dine with them at a certain German cafe, which at an earlier date had been rather famous as the rendezvous of a group of young journalists, wits, and unblossomed poets, known as “The Bohemians.”  The war had caused sad havoc with these light—­hearted Knights of the Long Table, and it was only upon a scattered remnant of the goodly company that the colonel had fallen.  How it came about, I do not know.  I know that the acquaintance presently flowered into intimacy, and that at frequent intervals after this we had a vacant chair at table.  My cousin did not give himself the pains to advise us of his engagements, so these absences were not as pleasant as they would have been if we had not expected him every minute.

Recently, too, our expectation of his coming was tinged with a dread which neither I nor Mrs. Wesley had named to each other.  A change was gradually taking place in my cousin.  Hitherto his amiability, even when he was most unendurable, had been a part of him.  Obviously he was losing that lightness of spirit which we once disliked and now began to regret.  He was inclined to be excitable and sullen by turns, and often of late I had been obliged to go to the bottom of my diplomacy in preventing some painful scene.  As I have said, neither my wife nor I had spoken definitely of this alteration; but the cause and nature of it could not long be ignored between us.

“How patient you are with him, dear!” said Mrs. Wesley, as I was turning out the gas after one of our grim and grotesque little dinners:  the colonel had not dined with us before for a week.  “I don’t see how you can be so patient with the man.”

“Blood is thicker than water, Clara.”

“But it isn’t thicker than whiskey and water, is it?”

She had said it.  The colonel was drinking.  It was not a question of that light elixir the precious receipt for which had been confided to him by Judge Ashburton Todhunter, of Fauquier County; it was a question of a heavier and more immediate poison.  The fact that Flagg might in some desperate state drop in on us at any moment stared us in the face.  That was a very serious contingency, and it was one I could not guard against.  I had no false ideas touching my influence over Washington Flagg.  I did not dream of attempting to influence him; I was powerless.  I could do nothing but wait, and wonder what would happen.  There was nothing the man might not be capable of in some insane moment.

In the meanwhile I was afraid to go out of an evening and leave Clara alone.  It was impossible for us to ask a friend to dinner, though, indeed, we had not done that since my cousin dropped down on us.  It was no relief that his visits grew rarer and rarer; the apprehension remained.  It was no relief when they ceased altogether, for it came to that at last.