The circle melted away in time, beginning with Muriel and Gerald Herkimer--who, in his bankruptcy and the absence of his family, partook of many dinners and a great deal of delightful sympathy at the ladies' residence--and ending with Penelope and Matilda, the latter of whom, though she exhibited fitful outbursts of vivacity, appeared depressed, and far from in good form. It was observed by those who saw them drive from the church door that, instead of taking the reins herself, she let the servant drive, quite contrary to her usual custom; but then Mr. Considine had been in the habit of returning with the ladies from church, and his presence at Matilda's elbow may have been necessary to give her confidence.
Betsey reached the open air at last, feeling unusually meek and chastened under the lack of notice she had been experiencing; and in the revulsion of feeling which ensued when Mr. Joe Webb stepped forward, and, after ceremoniously inquiring for her health, asked if she would not favour him with her company for a buggy-ride down the road, while her dinner was "_dishing up_" at home, it is not remarkable if she "enthused a little," to cull a flower of speech from the English column of the _Journal de St. Euphrase_.
"Oh! Thank you, Squire! that will be nice"--I fear _bully_ was the word she used, this sweet Western flower, but it means much the same thing, only a little more so.
"Then come along! In with you! And we'll be stepping," which was perhaps a more free-and-easy mode of address than Mr. Joe's wont, for he prided himself on his fine manners with the ladies; but he was trying to get up his courage by a little premature audacity for what was to follow.
Proposing matrimony in cold blood--did you ever try it, my reader?--is a serious matter, or so Joe Webb thought. His mind had been made up on the point, the night before; in the morning he saw no reason to change it, but he observed that the sky looked heavy. If it had drawn to rain he would not have been sorry, for he could, without loss of self-respect, have remained at home, and postponed his undertaking. The weather kept up however, and he went to church; but very few, I fear, were the prayers he joined in.
What he was intending to do would keep continually rising before his mind; not as it had done overnight in the comfortable after-phases, when My Lord Benedict should have entered on his domestic felicity, with slippers toasting inside the fender against his return from the field, pipes filled, and tobacco fetched, without his needing to leave the lounge where he reposed, but in the onerous stage of how to do it. What should he say? and how would she take it? Should he take her hand before beginning? It would be establishing a sort of hold upon her attention. But if she objected to that by an unauthorized individual?--yet the very objection would give the opening to explain, which he desired. Only--how about getting hold of the hand? It might be holding up her parasol. To snatch at it would bring down the article with a flap, which would frighten the horse! Weil, he did not mind that. He could quiet _him_ well enough with a cut of the whip. But how about the lady? How to quiet _her?_ The whip would not do there, yet a while; though later, he had been credibly informed that Blackstone authorizes such doings on the part of husbands, provided the stick be no thicker than their thumbs. But the lady might refuse to be reassured; she might insist on being let down, or worse, she might actually say. No. No! The word whistled through his mind like a gust of icy wind, it was so new and so unexpected an idea. He must feel tremulous, no doubt, till he should be answered "yes," but he could not bring himself to contemplate the opposite. It would be so utter a quencher to--well, if not to love for _her_, which was an eventuality he could contemplate with some tranquillity, at least to his self-love, which was too near his heart to be thought of without dismay. He would be, like a railway guard standing on the roof of a carriage, and sweeping through space at forty miles an hour, when unexpectedly there comes a bridge which he has not looked for, or bowed his head to in time, it catches him between the eyes with a blow irresistible and swift, which snuffs him out of existence, and casts him away, and leaves him a lifeless wreck upon the track.