chains of _gold_, the circulating----' and I suppose he was going to intimate by a delicate allegory that he couldn't afford a wife and family, but we reached the house at that moment, and the changes in its appearance switched him off, as it were." The old man was, in fact, rather pathetically overawed by all the Pallinder sumptuousness; he looked down at his boots doubtfully, and trod with caution on the velvet moss-roses and lilies of the south parlour. It required the telling of the cut-glass chandelier story to revive his spirit; and Mrs. Pallinder further smoothed matters by asking his opinion of the new wall-paper with a caressing deference. Afterwards, it is true, Steven went away in a mood of gracious approval, and bragged freely with no little satisfaction about his tenants in his house; but at the first moment, he was both startled and unhappy. There were gilt mirrors all about that gave back a pitiless reflection of the party, and of them all, I believe that Doctor Vardaman was the only one who was not faintly ill at ease. The situation was actually relieved by the entrance of old Mrs. Botlisch, as incongruous a figure in the scene as Steven himself. "And somehow or other," said the doctor, "I am sure the look of her for once was a kind of comfort to Gwynne; it seemed as if she and poor Steven were a--well, a stand-off, with the balance in favour of Steven. You know Mrs. Pallinder was always saying in a gentle regretful way that her mother was 'eccentric.' She was, in fact--ahem!--I am informed by the ladies of my acquaintance," Doctor Vardaman would say, with another grin, "that she was a dreadfully 'common' old person who drank and swore like a trooper, but was as sane as anybody. Whereas, we all know that whatever Steven's faults, he was not--was not entirely responsible." "That old Gwynne feller's crazy, ain't he?" the old woman said to him as the doctor sat at the Pallinder dinner-table that evening. There were a number of other guests, for the colonel's hospitalities were already well known; it was a pleasing picture of evening-coats, white shoulders, brilliant glassware, and cutlery; and Mrs. Pallinder at the head, lent the table a distinction like that of some expensive ornament or flower. Across the way sat her mother, shovelling in French peas on the blade of her knife, that being one of the phases of her eccentricity, and disposing of everything from soup to sweets with an audible gusto. "It's astonishing!" said the doctor to himself, his glance travelling from one woman to the other. "Pardon me, Mrs. Botlisch, you were saying----?" "I say that old Gwynne feller's crazy," said Mrs. Botlisch. "He ain't dangerous, is he?" "What? Steven?" said the doctor, and although she was very nearly right, he recoiled inwardly. "Why, no, he's not crazy, he's a little--a little eccentric," he finished, conscious of a wretched irony in the phrase.