She finished amid much applause, some shamefaced, some hearty, but there were a number of lowering brows. When adjournment was declared a few moments later, she left at once, but the others remained to talk the matter over. The ingrained love of finding our sister worse than ourselves is not to be eradicated by a few years of Club life, and although the majority decided that Mrs. Leslie was quite in the right, several announced their intention to cut Isabel Otis. There was no informal resolution taken to ignore the matter, and, on the whole, Mrs. Haight went home with her crest up, and Mrs. Wheaton fasted for three days. XXIX Mrs. Leslie was a brave woman, but when the judge suggested that it would be better for him to talk the matter over with Gwynne, obtain his explanation, and delicately hint the attitude of the town, she was nothing loath to renounce her mission. "The dear child," the friends of her mother all remembered, had once possessed a temper that only the peculiar circumstances of her life had chastened, and they had an uneasy suspicion that it still smouldered beneath the well-bred insolence with which she had so far received much friendly advice. By this time--mid-December was nigh--the judge and Gwynne had discussed many subjects besides the law. Mrs. Leslie, whose hospitable instincts were too deep to be blighted even by the servant question, had placed a room at Gwynne's disposal to be used when it rained, or he talked so late with the judge that the long ride home was not worth while. He dined with them several times a week, and found both these simple old-fashioned people delightful. And with Judge Leslie, alone of all his neighbors, could he discuss the affairs of the great world, get away from the politics and the small local interests that absorbed every other man in Rosewater. Moreover, Judge Leslie was well acquainted with his past career and often manifested a keen desire for details. Gwynne was not sure that these lapses were good for him, but certainly it was pleasant, stretched out there by the big fireplace in an old room full of books, English for the most part, to talk of himself and his achievements. Isabel rarely referred to his past, never encouraged him to talk about it. His mother had become as silent as a mummy; old man Colton might have lost his memory, and for Tom Colton British politics had no existence.