"And how long is it, pray, Sir Sage, since you took the beam from your own eye. If mine deceived me not, I saw you but a little while since swelling with all the offended dignity of majesty itself--merely because some more fortunate swain had previously secured the hand of the Governor's fair niece." "You are as far wrong in my affairs, Charles, as you were just now in your own. You seem peculiarly predisposed to-night, to see only the surface of things. Suppose that some half a dozen of those butterflies who are now congregating round Lady Berkley, were to form a plot by which you were to be deprived of the hand of that lady whom you most desired to lead to the dance? Nay, more, suppose that you considered it all important to your interests that you should possess the hand on this particular night, and that you should be thwarted by such a contrivance of _sub vice-royalty_! What would you do? Would you content yourself with spending your rage upon your own lips between your teeth?" "No, by heavens, I would tweak the nose of a small sprig of royalty itself." "What, under the circumstances and responsibilities that environ us to-night?" "No! not to-night certainly; there is no hurry in the business--his nasal organ will be as tangible a week hence as now, I suppose; but who is it that has done this deed? I see you have many rivals." "Frank Beverly, to be sure." "I supposed as much." "You see," continued Bacon, "that I have now removed the mote from my own eye, and that you did in my case exactly what you did in your own--you looked only at the surface. But really, Charles, between ourselves, I begin to entertain some fears that they will at last affect Virginia with their own aristocratic notions and pretensions, for the absence of which we have so often praised her. I have seen a strange unusual something stealing over her countenance whenever I have approached her of late, which I do not like. She evidently struggles with it herself, but it has obtained the mastery in every instance, so far. Think you they will succeed at last?" "I know not, my friend! but step with me into the entry--a word in your ear." The parties stepped just behind the casings to the door of the room in which they had been dancing, so as to occupy a small entry-way between the two largest apartments of the mansion, and there Dudley continued in an under tone.-- "Do you think they will dare _the deed_ to-night?" "As sure as there is truth in that strange old man--and he has never yet deceived me!" "Tis well! and are all things prepared for their reception?" "They are! As for myself, never did such occasion come more opportunely. I will raise a bloody monument to perpetuate the events of this night upon more than one memory in yonder gay assembly! And since the thought strikes me, Dudley, tis pity I disturbed the savage moroseness which was just stealing over you; however I shall retain a _quantum sufficit_ for us both!"