"No, he is going to walk in the garden with Miss Featherstone."
Mrs. Pinckney felt quite cross: "He is positively insolent, ordering things about in this way, interrupting my nap and all. What, under Heaven, should I do without her if he is in earnest about Miss Featherstone?"
If she could have heard what Colonel Pinckney was saying in the garden she would have been still crosser.
"I want to enlighten you a little as to my fair sister-in-law," he began after a few commonplaces.
"Oh, please don't, Colonel Pinckney"--unconsciously she was sliding into the "Colonel." "I'd much rather you wouldn't. I think--" and she hesitated.
"Why"--and she looked embarrassed--"I am afraid I shall not love Mrs. Pinckney as well if you analyze and show up all her little weaknesses. We could none of us bear it," she continued warmly. "Remember that line--
I like to love people, and feel like a woman in some novel I've read: 'Long and deeply let me be beguiled with regard to the infirmities of those I love.'"
Miss Featherstone looked startled and annoyed.
Colonel Pinckney, with much self-possession, recovered himself immediately. "We all know it," he continued jestingly--"Mr. Brown, the children, servants and all; but, in spite of this, you shall not be imposed upon. Now, I wish to give you a résumé of Mrs. Pinckney's life--"
"Oh, Colonel Pinckney! when we are under her roof!"
"It is a shelter bought with my father's money," he returned. "But you must and shall hear me: it is necessary. She is the incarnation of selfishness: in a young person it could go no further. One can pardon anything rather than selfishness. She entirely exhausted our charity during poor Harry's long illness. She travelled with every comfort that money could give: she had her maid, Harry had his man, the children were left with my mother. One winter they went to Nassau, the next to the south of France: from both places she wrote such despairing letters that my poor old father and mother were nearly beside themselves. It was like the explosion of a bomb-shell in the household when a letter came from Virginia. Sometimes I used to read and suppress them: they were filled with shrieks and lamentations. Harry was in a rapid decline; the mental torture was more than she could bear; some one must come immediately out to her, etc. The first winter my eldest brother went, to the serious injury of his business: he is a lawyer. I went when they were in Europe, my wound not yet healed. By George! Harry looked in better health than I: every one thought I was the invalid. The doctor was called in immediately, who said I had endangered my life by the expedition. I found out my lady had been to balls and on excursions all the time she was writing those harrowing letters."