"Sick with a cold" was his excuse when
he appeared again at the table, with haggard face and bloodshot eyes;
but in the parlor, and halls, and private rooms, there where whispers of
soiled clothes and jammed hats, and the servants bribed to keep the
secret that young lawyer Clifford's boots were carried dangling up to
No. 94 at a very late hour of the night on which he professed to have
taken his cold. After this, pretty Marcia Fenton, who, before Ethelyn
came to town, had ridden oftenest after the black horses owned by Harry,
tossed her curls when he came near, and arched her eyebrows in a manner
rather distasteful to the young man; while Ella Backus turned her back
upon him, and in his hearing gave frequent lectures on intemperance and
its loathsomeness. Ethelyn, on the contrary, made no difference in her
demeanor toward him. She cared nothing for him either way, except that
his polite attentions and delicate deference to her tastes and opinions
were complimentary and flattering, and so she saw no reason why she
should shun him because he had fallen once. It might make him worse, and
she should stand by him as an act of philanthropy, she said to Richard
when he asked her what she saw to admire in that drunken Clifford.
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