I will not weary the reader with details of the preliminaries. They are unimportant to my narrative. A note, dispatched by Augustus to the Rev. Ebenezer Fiscuel, informed that gentleman that about half-past ten o'clock of an appointed evening he would be waited on by a couple desirous of being united in holy matrimony.
Augustus arranged to have a carriage in waiting under Terpsichore's window about ten o'clock, and, with the aid of a ladder and the above-mentioned clergyman, he hoped to settle the vexed question of the property, and render all further opposition to their union of an _ex post facto_ character.
The evening came, and it found Mrs. Taragon and her daughter seated together in the parlor. Terpsichore was crocheting a net, which, like Penelope's, grew very slowly. She was nervous and fidgety. Her eyes wandered restlessly from her mother to the door, and she started at the slightest sound. Mrs. Taragon seemed uncommonly suspicious and alert. She was reading, but had not turned a leaf for half an hour. She glanced furtively and continually about the room.
"She has found us out," thought Terpsichore, and her heart almost stopped beating. With a great effort she controlled herself, and had recourse to stratagem.
"Mother, dear," she said, dropping the net in her lap, "you look tired; why don't you go to bed?"
"Oh, no, darling," said the widow, cheerfully, "I don't feel a bit weary. But your eyes look red, and I think _you_ had better retire."
"No, mamma, not yet," she replied. "I want to finish this net. I have done so little upon it lately."
A slight shade of vexation crossed the face of the widow.
"If you had devoted yourself to the net," she said, spitefully, "it would have been finished."
Terpsichore blushed guiltily. Augustus had spent more than two hours with her that day; and she felt a presentiment that impending wrath was about to descend on her devoted head.
"I am sure, mother," she said, quietly, "_you_ can't complain of my seeing too much company."
This shot told; for Mr. Pompadour had been very attentive of late.
Mrs. Taragon nearly tore a leaf out of her book.
"At any rate," she retorted, "my visitors are respectable."
Terpsichore's lip quivered. The remark was cruel, but it roused her spirit.