Mrs. Tayloe shivered at intervals, hysterically. She caught her breath at every other word.
"Comfort! They are a part of my _torment_. He will manage them to suit himself. Do you know that he whipped my little Lizzie when she was only a _month_ old for crying with the colic? She was the oldest, you know, and her father said he couldn't begin discipline _too_ early. He whipped her with a willow switch. My mother told him he was a _brute_, and he turned her out of the house--the house my father gave me!
"Set that down on the table here, Hampton, and you, Ned, tell Mr. David Grigsby that the snack is ready."
"He never eats between meals," said Flea, taking the chair Mrs. Tayloe pushed up to the table, "and I ought not; but I am so hungry, and everything looks so tempting, that I cannot refuse."
It was a lavish luncheon, and Mrs. Tayloe took a childish delight in pressing her delicacies upon the visitor.
"Hampton," she said, after a while, with a touch of her girlish vivacity, "go get a bottle of that shrub your master makes such a _fuss_ over. I _must_ have Miss Grigsby taste it. Here is the cupboard key."
When it was brought she went on with the same feverish gayety:
"He made it himself four years ago, and he gets stingier and stingier with it every year. It really is _mighty_ good, though I wouldn't tell him so to save his life. He'd _kill_ me if he knew I'd touched it."
"Don't have it opened--please!" begged Flea, checking the hand that held out the corkscrew to the butler. "I really would rather not drink it. I don't care for liquor of any kind."
Mrs. Tayloe shook her hand off with a shriek of laughter.
"I believe you are _afraid_ of him to this day. Hampton won't tell on us. It isn't the _first_ secret he and I have kept from our lord and master. Open it!" to the grinning man. "Now fill two glasses--one for Miss Grigsby and one for me. Take yours, Flea! I'll give you a toast. _Single_ blessedness forever, and confusion to all husbands!"
Her elbow was grasped from behind as she lifted the glass above her head. Flea had set hers down, untasted, having seen who was coming up through the hall from the back door. At the same moment David Grigsby hurried around the corner of the house. He had had a glimpse of Mr. Tayloe as he rode into the stable-yard by way of a plantation road, and hoped to reach the porch in season to get his sister away without encountering him.