“What could have tempted her?—what could have tempted her?” repeated Uncle Billy, mockingly, shutting his eyes, pinching his lips, and bobbing up his nose and chin, with petulance and contempt. “What could have tempted her to _marry Doctor Wells, at her age_?—a woman of forty, whose matrimonial feelings should all be quiet? What could have tempted her to do _that_?” “I suppose my mother was lonesome.” “Oh! lonesome be hanged! Wasn’t _I_ there—her natural born brother—to keep her company? I don’t brag—but you know what company _I am_, nephew.” “Yes,” said Mark, suppressing a smile. “Well, I was there to take care of her, and protect her, and keep her company, and cowhide her niggers—although that last is very laborious exertion, and always put me in a profuse perspiration, and gives me a palpitation of the heart—the thoughtless creatures, to put me to the trouble of fatiguing myself so. And now, if you want to know what _tempted_ your mother to sell her home and leave all her friends, I’ll just tell you—vanity.” “Vanity!” “Yes, _vanity_—the wish to be thought generous, and disinterested, and _confiding_,” sneered Uncle Billy. Mark Sutherland reddened. “My dearest mother was all that in reality, without wishing to be _thought_ so!” “I tell you ’twas _vanity_—_vanity_ that tempted her to sell her home—_vanity_ that tempted her to marry—_vanity_ that tempted her first to listen to a suitor—_a woman of her age_! But I do think women are the most incorrigible—the most provoking—the most hopeless—and of all women, middle-aged widows are the most _desperate_ fools!” “Uncle Billy, I suppose, as an old bachelor, you have a license to rail at women in general, and, as an elder brother, you have liberty to be unjust to your sister. My mother was a handsome woman, in her prime, and it appears to me not unnatural that she should have married. But if you thought otherwise, you should have told her so.” “For what good? A cat _may_ release a mouse from its claws; a rattle-snake a charmed bird from its jaws; the grave give up its victim; but never cat held mouse, or snake bird, or grave victim with such a death-grip as a middle-aged widow holds her last lover!” “Just now you told me that Dr. Wells tempted my mother into this marriage—now, you lay the responsibility upon _her_. That is like you, old, impartial justice, Mr. ‘Bothsides.’” “All true. They tempted each other—she, him, with her handsome property! he, her, with his handsome person! He was bent on having her plantation!—she, on having him. And so they soldered an engagement that Satan himself, with his sledge hammer, could not have shivered. I’ll tell you all about it, Mark! I kept a sharp look-out on that chap when he first came prowling about Silentshades. I was tempted to shoot him by mistake, for a catamount. But _I_ twigged him! Very little of that palavering courtship, that _I_ didn’t hear! Sure as ever they’d be on the piazza, _I’d_ be in the parlour under the window, listening.”