Miss Caroline was both surprised and gratified. At the previous meeting she had detected no sign of this concurring sentiment. She plunged again into Byron with renewed enthusiasm. The afternoon came to a glorious end, and the ladies departed with many expressions of rejoicing. They had found Miss Caroline so charming that several of them were torn with fresh pity and brought to the verge of tears when they thought of her furniture. Marcella Eubanks did cry on the way home and had to put down her green barege veil. But that was for thinking of poor little Paul Dombey. She was mourning him as a personal loss. Also must she have adored the genius of a master who could thus move her from a calm that was constitutional with every known Eubanks. CHAPTER XVIII IN WHICH THE GAME WAS PLAYED The next _Argus_ said of Miss Caroline's afternoon that "the ladies present one and all report a most enjoyable time." There was another mysterious paragraph, too, farther down the column of "locals," which proclaimed that "The immovable body has at last been struck by the irresistible force and has failed to live up to its reputation. It moved and moved so you could see it move. Another bubble exploded! We live in a sensational age." Now, while it is true that the ladies, "one and all," had spoken with entire enthusiasm of their afternoon at the unpretentious home of my neighbor, I, nevertheless, deemed it vital to hold plain speech with that impulsive woman immediately. I saw, indeed, that I should have acted after the incident of the mint juleps. Solon Denney, who had experienced the hospitality of Miss Caroline, and who could speak from a wider knowledge than our minister or the ladies of the town, had once said:-- "Those mint juleps are simple, honest things. They taste injurious from the start. But that punch--it's hypocritical. It steals into your brain as a little child steals its rosebud hand into yours, beguiling you with prattle; but afterwards--well, if I had the choice, I'd rather be chloroformed and struck sharply with an axe. I'd be my old self again sooner." Whereupon he would have written a guarded piece for the paper about this had I not dissuaded him. But I saw that I must at once have with Miss Caroline what in a later day came to be called "a heart-to-heart talk"; and I forthwith summoned what valor I could for the ordeal. "I never dreamed--I never suspected--how _should_ I?" she murmured pathetically, after my opening speech of a few simple but telling phrases. She listened in genuine horror while I gave the reasons why she might justly regard the call of our minister and her entertainment of the Club as nothing short of adventures--adventures which she had survived scathless not but by the favor of an indulgent Providence. "So _that_ is what those little white satin bows mean?" she asked, and I said that it most emphatically was.