“Come, cousin, don’t stand there looking like one of the Fates; you’ve only seen a peep through the curtain,—­a specimen of what is going on, the world over, in some shape or other.  If we are to be prying and spying into all the dismals of life, we should have no heart to anything.  ’T is like looking too close into the details of Dinah’s kitchen;” and St. Clare lay back on the sofa, and busied himself with his paper.

Miss Ophelia sat down, and pulled out her knitting-work, and sat there grim with indignation.  She knit and knit, but while she mused the fire burned; at last she broke out—­“I tell you, Augustine, I can’t get over things so, if you can.  It’s a perfect abomination for you to defend such a system,—­that’s my mind!”

“What now?” said St. Clare, looking up.  “At it again, hey?”

“I say it’s perfectly abominable for you to defend such a system!” said Miss Ophelia, with increasing warmth.

“I defend it, my dear lady?  Who ever said I did defend it?” said St. Clare.

“Of course, you defend it,—­you all do,—­all you Southerners.  What do you have slaves for, if you don’t?”

“Are you such a sweet innocent as to suppose nobody in this world ever does what they don’t think is right?  Don’t you, or didn’t you ever, do anything that you did not think quite right?”

“If I do, I repent of it, I hope,” said Miss Ophelia, rattling her needles with energy.

“So do I,” said St. Clare, peeling his orange; “I’m repenting of it all the time.”

“What do you keep on doing it for?”

“Didn’t you ever keep on doing wrong, after you’d repented, my good cousin?”

“Well, only when I’ve been very much tempted,” said Miss Ophelia.

“Well, I’m very much tempted,” said St. Clare; “that’s just my difficulty.”

“But I always resolve I won’t and I try to break off.”

“Well, I have been resolving I won’t, off and on, these ten years,” said St. Clare; “but I haven’t, some how, got clear.  Have you got clear of all your sins, cousin?”

“Cousin Augustine,” said Miss Ophelia, seriously, and laying down her knitting-work, “I suppose I deserve that you should reprove my short-comings.  I know all you say is true enough; nobody else feels them more than I do; but it does seem to me, after all, there is some difference between me and you.  It seems to me I would cut off my right hand sooner than keep on, from day to day, doing what I thought was wrong.  But, then, my conduct is so inconsistent with my profession, I don’t wonder you reprove me.”

“O, now, cousin,” said Augustine, sitting down on the floor, and laying his head back in her lap, “don’t take on so awfully serious!  You know what a good-for-nothing, saucy boy I always was.  I love to poke you up,—­that’s all,—­just to see you get earnest.  I do think you are desperately, distressingly good; it tires me to death to think of it.”