Poor Johnnie! He sat glaring at Bertie with furious eyes. Johnnie’s little bit of bookish distinction disappeared and sank to nothing in presence of Bertie’s epaulettes. Nobody felt the least interest to-day in Mrs. Harley’s clever cripple-boy. His Laura indeed had kept him in life, when she first arrived, by some morsels of kindness, but Laura too had gone over to the enemy. Laura was visibly disposed to charm into her own train that troublesome interloper, and Johnnie, who had resented and forgiven fifty violent flirtations of his lady-love since he himself first found new life, as he said, in her eyes, was more bitterly resentful of this defection than he had been of any previous one. If she and the other culprit, Bertie, could have been consumed by looks, we should have had only two little heaps of ashes to clear away from the Sedgwicks’ dinner-table that day in place of those two unfortunate people; but Miss Reredos was happily non-combustible. She swept away in all the fulness of crinoline when the inevitable moment came and we womenkind were dismissed, insulting her unhappy young lover by a little nod and smile addressed to him across the table, which would have been delicious an hour ago, but was wormwood and bitterness now. Bertie, I think, at the same moment caught Alice’s lofty, offended, indignant glance, and brightened to see the quiet resentment in that perverse young woman’s face. It had all the effect of sunshine upon our soldier. At that crisis we left affairs, when we went to the drawing-room. I confess I don’t share the often-expressed sentiment about the dulness and absurdity of that little after-dinner interval. The young ladies and the young gentlemen may not like it, perhaps, but when could we maturer womenkind snatch a comfortable moment for that dear domestic talk which you superior people call gossip, if it were not in the pleasant relaxation of this interregnum, when the other creatures are comfortably disposed of downstairs? But for once in my life, being profoundly interested in the present little drama--there is always one at least going on in a great house in the country full of visitors--I did long that day for the coming of the gentlemen, or of Bertie, at least, the hero at once of the situation and of the day. The first to come upstairs was Johnnie Harley. For some time past he had rather affected, as a manly practice, the habit of sitting to the last after dinner. This day he was burning to discharge the fulness of his wrath upon Miss Reredos, so he lost no time, anxious to be beforehand with his new rival. Miss Reredos had already posed herself at a table, covered with a wealth of prints and photographs, these sentimental amusements being much in her way.