precipitated two wholly inevitable actions on his part; he had bound himself more than ever to marry Hortense, and he had made a furious breach with his Aunt Eliza.  That was what his letter had contained; this time he had banished himself from that house.  What was his Aunt Eliza going to do about it?  I wondered.  She was a stiff, if indiscreet, old lady, and it certainly did not fall within her view of the proprieties that young people should take their elders to task in furious letters.  But she had been totally in the wrong, and her fault was irreparable, because important things had happened in consequence of it; she might repent the fault in sackcloth and ashes, but she couldn’t stop the things.  Would she, then, honorably wear the sackcloth, or would she dishonestly shirk it under the false issue of her nephew’s improper tone to her?  Women can justify themselves with more appalling skill than men.

One drop there was in all this bitter bucket, which must have tasted sweet to John.  He had resigned from the Custom House:  Juno had got it right this time, though she hadn’t a notion of the real reason for John’s act.  This act had been, since morning, lost for me, so to speak, in the shuffle of more absorbing events; and it now rose to view again in my mind as a telling stroke in the full-length portrait that all his acts had been painting of the boy during the last twenty-four hours.  Notwithstanding a meddlesome aunt, and an arriving sweetheart, and imminent wedlock, he hadn’t forgotten to stop “taking orders from a negro” at the very first opportunity which came to him; his phosphates had done this for him, at least, and I should have the pleasure of correcting Juno at tea.

But I did not have this pleasure.  They were all in an excitement over something else, and my own different excitement hadn’t a chance against this greater one; for people seldom wish to hear what you have to say, even under the most favorable circumstances, and never when they have anything to say themselves.  With an audience so hotly preoccupied I couldn’t have sat on Juno effectively at all, and therefore I kept it to myself, and attended very slightly to what they were telling me about the Daughters of Dixie.

I bowed absently to the poetess.  “And your poem?” I said.  “A great success, I am sure?”

“Why, didn’t you hear me say so?” said the upcountry bride; and then, after a smile at the others, “I’m sure your flowers were graciously accepted.”

“Ask Miss Josephine St. Michael,” I replied.

“Oh, oh, oh!” went the bride.  “How would she know?”