"I dare say I don't know much about it," said Phoebe, calmly; "but I know that if a man really loves one woman with all his heart, he won't laugh and whisper and play with the fan of another, or else he is not worth anybody's love. And I am afraid what Mr Welles wants is just your money and not you. I beg your pardon, Cousin Rhoda." It was time. Rhoda was in a towering passion. What could Phoebe mean, she demanded with terrible emphasis, by telling such lies as those? Did she suppose that Rhoda was going to believe them? Did Phoebe know what the Bible said about speaking ill of your neighbour? Wasn't she completely ashamed of herself? "And I'll tell you what, Phoebe Latrobe," concluded Rhoda, "I don't believe it, and I won't! I'm not going to believe it,--not if you go down on your knees and swear it! 'Tis all silly, wicked, abominable nonsense!--and you know it!" "Well, if you won't believe it, there's an end," said Phoebe, quietly. "And I think, if you please, Cousin, we had better go to sleep." "Pugh! Sleep if you can, you false-hearted crocodile!" said Rhoda, poetically, in distant imitation of the flowers of rhetoric of her friend Molly. "I shan't sleep to-night. Not likely!" Yet Rhoda was asleep the first. CHAPTER NINE. SOMETHING ALTERS EVERYTHING. "To-night we sit together here, To-morrow night shall come--ah, where?" _Robert Lord Lytton_. "There! Didn't I tell you, now?" ejaculated Mrs Jane Talbot. "I am sure I don't know, Jane," responded her sister, in querulous tones. "You are always talking about something. I never can tell how you manage to keep continually talking, in the way you do. I could not bear it. I never was a talker; I haven't breath for it, with my poor chest,--such a perpetual rattle,--I don't know how you stand it, I'm sure. And to think what a beautiful singer I was once! Young Sir Samuel Dennis once said I entranced him, when he had heard my singing to Mrs Lucy's spinnet--positively entranced him! And Lord James Morehurst--" "An unmitigated donkey!" slid in Mrs Jane. "Jane, how you do talk! One can't get in a word for you. What was I saying, Clarissa?" "You were speaking of Lord James Morehurst, dear Marcella. 'Tis all very well for Jane to run him down," said Mrs Vane in a languishing style, fanning herself as she spoke, "but I am sure he was the most charming black man I ever saw. He once paid me such a compliment on my fine eyes!" "More jackanapes he!" came from Mrs Jane. "Well, I don't believe he ever paid you such an one," said Mrs Clarissa, pettishly. "He'd have got his ears boxed if he had," returned Mrs Jane. "The impudence of some of those fellows!"