Chapter II: Mrs. Monteagle (4)

On the other hand, those who aver the existence of imperceptible powers and occult qualities as the actual efficients of phenomena do not attempt to define their character, nor pretend that they fall within the limits of sensible or intellectual cognition. A member of that sect, like the pedant in the old play, may explain “that opium produces sleep because it has a soporific property”; but if you ask him how he knows it to possess such a property, he can only answer, from the fog of his vicious circle, “because it produces sleep.” And such must ever be the virtual avowal of utter ignorance as to the nature of causation by the adherents of this obsolete school. And could they thus solve, even to their own satisfaction, the question of _secondary_ causes, they leave the question of the First Cause untouched.

It therefore follows, in accordance with all the rules of the most rigid and thorough induction, that the mathematical harmonies of the universe furnish conclusive proofs of an intelligent cause; and if we reject this inference there is not, and cannot be, the faintest shadow of a possible hypothesis for the explanation of natural phenomena.

I will next proceed to state my second proposition: All natural phenomena have the characteristics of mathematical order and harmony to the exclusion of chance.

Now, it is evident that a generalization so sweeping and universal as the above could only be made good by an immense, an almost infinite series of inductions. Nevertheless, we are not bound to assume an _onus_ of such overpowering magnitude. For as the syllogism of our argument belongs to the first figure, and we have to deal at present with the minor premise, that may well be particular; and the conclusion will be valid as to everything embraced within its terms, and that will be found sufficient to warrant our conclusion.

As a preliminary, however, it becomes necessary to explain the logical process for the exclusion or mathematical elimination of chance. Suppose there be two dice in a box, what are the chances of our turning an ace at a single throw? Obviously one-sixth, leaving six chances _minus_ one against the probability; while the chances against our throwing two aces, or any other equation, may be set down, with sufficient accuracy for the purpose of this argument, as the square of the last number, or thirty-six. The chances against an equation of four dice are 1,296; while against eight they amount to the enormous sum of 1,679,616—an impossible throw, unless the cubes have been loaded. And it is manifest from this example how very soon the multiplication of coincidences indicative of order must demonstrate causation to the utter elimination of chance. I will now commence with the particular cases of the general law announced in my second premise.

INSTANCE I.—MYSELF.

I survey my right hand: it has five fingers; I look at my left: it has five also—the other member of an algebraic equation. I then turn to my feet, and behold a similar equation of five toes on each. I next turn to my bodily senses, and again find the mystic five. The wonder is increasing. And now all the incalculable millions of my fellow-men rise up and sweep before the eye of the mind, in all the rich and radiant, or coarse and unseemly, varieties of humanity; and all these, too, present the identical God-announcing miracle, the quintuple equation of fives.

Let us, however, apply the rigorous rules for the calculation of chances, not forgetting the judicious remark of Whately: “That the probability of any given supposition must be estimated by means of a comparison with each of its alternatives.”

Now, there can be but two suppositions possible as to this uniform combination by which the number five is five times repeated in the human organism. The cause, whatever that may be, which produces these invariable equations must be endowed with intelligence or not. There is no other conceivable alternative; for the _abscissio infiniti_ effected by the word not, in logical division, always exhausts the whole category of things, both real and imaginary. Every object must be rational or not—rational in thought and in fact.

Therefore all these millionary equations of fives must have been produced by a cause, or causes, possessed of reason, or by a power destitute of that attribute. If we assume the first alternative there will be no chances for calculation, the efficient itself being amply adequate to develop the mathematical harmony.

But take up the other and only remaining supposition, that the causal agent producing the human organism is mere blind force of some unknown and unimaginable nature; what are the chances against such a hypothesis? We might say, in all logical strictness, that as we have no scientific knowledge of any such unintelligent cause capable of effecting the given phenomena of order, while we are acquainted with an efficient fully competent for the purpose, the chances against the naked assumption of blind force must be stated as infinity to zero. The chances against the equation of five fingers on each hand would be twenty-five. Add the five toes on each foot, and the chances will be six hundred and twenty-five. Then incorporate into the calculation the five senses, and the chances are three thousand one hundred and twenty-five. Let me procure a larger sheet, as the measureless sea of infinite and nameless numbers is flowing fast upon me. Next reckon the chances in the case of two persons, and they swell to the vast sum of nine millions, seven hundred and sixty-five thousand, six hundred and twenty-five; while the chances for four men will be the square of that number, and so on for ever. But the enormous sums soon overpower all the magnificent processes of our algebra, and no logarithmic abbreviations can aid us to grasp what stretches away into the unexplored fields of immensity. The attempt to apply the calculation even to the inhabitants now living on the globe would be as idle as the endeavor to enumerate the sunbeams shed during a solar year. The arithmetic of the archangel would perhaps be insufficient for the mighty computation.

In reference also to a single individual the subject might be pushed indefinitely farther—to the bones of the arms, head, feet, and the convolutions of the brain; for everywhere, and all through the physical framework, there runs a wonderful duality, where the series of constant equations counterbalance each other.

It must be borne in mind that I have shown in my major premise the necessity of rationality in the cause which effects mathematical order in the sequences of any natural phenomena. Hence such a cause is demonstrated for the whole of humanity. But, apart from the rigid logic of the argument, the question presents itself to popular apprehension: Could a cause without the intellect to perceive, the faculty to calculate and arrange, numerical relations, produce this infinity of mathematical harmonies?

If it be answered that the efficient is some unknown power or secret quality involved in the facts themselves or concealed beneath them, the problem still remains unsolved and rebounds upon us with accumulated force: Is that supposed secret power or occult quality self-conscious? Hath it the attribute of mathematical reason competent to the calculation and production of all these beautiful and boundless equations?

INSTANCE II.—CHEMISTRY.

Let us take our next comparisons from chemistry, that youngest sister of all the sciences, the splendid child of the galvanic battery, whose birth was brilliant as that of lightning.

Go analyze a cup of water. You find it composed of two parts of hydrogen to one of oxygen by volume, and eight parts of oxygen to one of hydrogen by weight. Nor do these numerical ratios ever vary. Freeze it into ice hard as the crystal of the jewelled mountains; dissipate it into vapor of such exquisite tenuity that a million acres of floating mist would scarcely form a single dewdrop; bring it from the salt solitudes of the ocean, or from the central curve of a rainbow, and submit it to the test of analysis; and still the pale chemist, as he watches the evolutions of the perpetual wonder from the depths of his laboratory, calls out: “Two to one, and one to eight, now and for ever!”

Let no one hope to estimate the chances against the hypothesis of the production of these mathematical relations by an unintelligent agent, unless he can first reckon the drops of a thunder-storm or measure the capacity of the sea.

A similar numerical harmony prevails in the atmosphere, which contains twenty parts of oxygen to eighty of nitrogen in every one hundred by volume, very nearly; the definite proportions never varying. Can it be imagined that the cause of this constant order, which rolled the aerial ocean of the breath of life forty-five miles deep around the globe, is itself destitute of the reason to perceive the ratios of its own wonderful works?

But select as another example a bit of limestone. You discover its elements to bear a quadruple proportion. There are twenty-two parts by weight of carbonic acid, and twenty-eight of lime. Lime yields on analysis twenty parts of the white metal calcium and eight of oxygen gas; while carbonic acid is composed of sixteen parts of oxygen to six of pure carbon. And these fixed relations of numbers are the same in every particle of limestone on the earth: in the snowy stalactite torn from the roof of coral caverns, in the ponderous fragment hurled up from the heart of the globe by the fiery hand of world-rocking volcanoes, and in the gleaming pebble which the child picks up from the waters of the brook. What a field is here for the calculation of chances! What a theme for devout and transcendent wonder! What a magnificent Bible with leaves of crystal is this among the old silent rocks! Must not such marvels of mathematical order have been produced by an efficient endowed with rationality—a cause that, to borrow the sublime language of Hebrew poetry, had the skill “to weigh the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance”?

But not only do we find numerical ratios here; symbolical angles are also detected. All the hundred forms of carbonate of lime split into six-sided figures, or regular rhombohedrons, whose alternate angles measure 105 deg. 55 min. and 75 deg. 5 min. Let the mathematician come with his trigonometry fresh from the schools to study this lofty lesson; although no science can avail for the computation of the chances against the hypothesis of an unintelligent cause for this celestial geometry of the crystal mountains.

INSTANCE III.—BOTANY.

We will make our next inductions in that study so charming to all genuine lovers of nature. Not over smoky furnaces or in darkened chambers will we read this division of our theme, but out in the sunny fields, and in the green-robed valleys, among the silken sisterhood of vegetable beauties, and beneath the radiant smile of the blue-eyed heavens.

The first ten classes of Linnæus are arranged simply according to the number of stamens presented in each blossom. For example, let us analyze a flower of the tobacco plant. It is of the fifth class, and of course has five stamens. But the equation does not end here; its corol has five parts, and the emerald cup of its calyx as many points.

Now, suppose that every bloom is produced by some efficient which cannot count; what are the chances against this combination of fives three times in a single specimen? Obviously one hundred and twenty-five; while for two flowers they amount to the sum of fifteen thousand, six hundred and twenty-five. For four blossoms the chances would be the square of the last number, and so on _ad infinitum_. What, then, must be the chances against the supposition of atheism in the flowers of a solitary field, in all the fields of a solar summer, in all the summers of sixty centuries?

But similar equations hold with all the vegetables to be found on the globe, and in their fruit as well as flower. Some blossoms are perfect time-pieces, marking the eternal march of the celestial lights in the firmament. Many open to the morning sun; some only to the fiery kisses of noonday; others at purple twilight when the gentle dews begin to fall; and a few in the depth of darkness, as it were to gaze on the glory of the midnight stars.

INSTANCE IV.—LIGHT.

I shall not hazard a remark as to the nature of that wonderful agent whose coming at the dawn of every day is like the sweet smile of some viewless yet omnipresent divinity, bringing with it the revelation of a new world. At present we have only to deal with mathematical evolutions, and not with the substantial essence of any fact or phenomenon.

The first law of light is an algebraic formula: The intensity of the fluid decreases as the square of the distance increases, and _vice versâ_.

The second law is equally mathematical: The angles of incidence and reflection are equivalent for every ray. Thus a sunbeam, falling on the table before me at an angle of forty-five degrees, will be reflected at the same angle.

Here, then, in the development of these two general laws, we behold the miracle of innumerable squares, circles, angles, such as sweep over countless millions of leagues in the stellar spaces, with a regularity that no Euclid or Legendre might ever hope to trace. And can it be possible that after all the great cause which thus _geometrizes_ may be devoid of all geometrical knowledge—nay, of even the faculty of rationality? If so, then might a blind mole, or the abstraction of a nonentity, compose a system of beauty and order superior in both accuracy and splendor to the _Principia_ of Newton or the sublime theories of La Place!

You can scarcely commence the estimation of chances in reference to these luminous angles being continually formed all over the material universe. Even imagination reels before the immensity of the conception. Think of all the fire-beams that emanate from the sun during one long summer day—of all the rays which flash out from the high stars for only a single night! Then let the mind travel back over the march of dim and distant centuries, gathering age upon age, rolling cycle after cycle, in those vast segments of eternity where the Alps and Andes seem evanescent as the snow-flakes that ride on the gyrations of the whirlwind around their hoary summits; where Platonic years are fleeting as the pulsations of the pendulum, and even the starry galaxies come and go “like rainbows.” Then bid your soaring fancy lift her lightning-wings away from world to world, and behold the horizon of the space which hath no limits, still opening for ever onwards and upwards, and thickening all around with serial columns of suns and stars, and undulating like some shoreless sea with its waves of nebulous light. Then tell me the number of rays that have shot athwart this teeming expanse of immensity since the sons of heaven shouted their choral hymns in the morning of creation. And answer me, who shall calculate the chances against the sceptical hypothesis here? Only a God of infinite intelligence may solve this infinite problem.

INSTANCE V.—ASTRONOMY.

The first law of the celestial motions discovered by Kepler, like all the rest, expresses a mathematical formula: All the planetary orbits are regular ellipses, in the lower focus of which stands the sun.

Now, as the ellipse contains an infinite number of geometrical points, it follows that the chances against the repetition of this figure by the progress of the same body along the same path in space must be infinity multiplied into infinity, compared with zero.

The second law is equally decisive. It may be stated thus: The times occupied by a planet in describing any given arc of its orbit are always as the areas of the sectors, formed by straight lines from the beginning and end of the arcs to the sun as a common centre. And here it cannot fail to be remarked that every term of the enunciation is purely mathematical.

But the third law of Kepler is still more astonishing. The squares of the periods of the planetary revolutions vary as the cubes of their distances from the sun.

What amazing evolutions are these to be the work of unthinking masses of matter! What angel’s music is this among the stars to be chimed by the choir of tongueless atoms! And well might the inspired old man exclaim when the heavenly harmony first broke upon his ear: “I have stolen the golden secret of the Egyptians. I triumph. I will indulge my sacred fury. I care not whether my book be read now or by posterity. I can afford to wait a century for readers, when God himself has waited six thousand years for an observer.”

We will not speak of chances in the production of such a mathematical marvel. We dare not approach the stupendous calculation, unless we might borrow the geometry of the morning star.

But every region of astronomy overflows with similar wonders; yet I have only time to adduce one more. The sun and all his suite of luminous attendants rotate from west to east, on axes that remain nearly parallel to themselves. La Place has computed the probability to be as four millions to one that all the motions of the planets, whether of rotation or revolution, originated in a common cause. Is it, then, even so much as conceivable that the efficient of such an endless order should be itself destitute of all reason and foresight? For it is universally conceded that the discovery and quick perception of mathematical relations evince intellect of the most lofty character; how incomparably superior, therefore, must have been the rationality required for the primary composition and arrangement of these relations! If to think geometrically demands intelligence, can any cause work geometrically without possessing the attributes of thought? We admire the genius of a Kepler and of a Newton as almost superhuman, because they were enabled to understand the harmonious laws of the heavenly bodies; what madness, then, must it be to deny the existence of mind as the necessary efficient for the production of these very harmonies!

I might go on to career all over the fields of science, and show the prevalence of mathematical ratios and equations in every department of approachable nature. But on the strength of the instances already adduced I think we are entitled to assume our minor premise as thoroughly proven: that all natural phenomena have the characteristic of mathematical order and harmony to the exclusion of chance. And this induction, although it only rests for support on the canon of agreement—_per enumerationem simplicem, ubi non reperitur instantia contradictoria_—nevertheless has as broad and firm a basis as the philosophic axiom that every fact has a cause. For as we have never found a phenomenon without an efficient, so neither can we ever find one without its relations of mathematical order.

And now calling to mind our major premise—that every natural phenomenon having the characteristics of mathematical order and harmony must be the effect of a rational cause—it follows irresistibly by the rules of logic, from the conjugation of the two propositions, that all natural phenomena are the effects of a rational cause.

But we are not yet justified in dignifying the efficient of all these natural phenomena with the name of God. For the cause, though demonstrated to be intelligent, may be one or many, permanent or transient, good or evil. We have only inquired as to its existence, without considering any other attribute. However, we have not far to go in the sequel of the investigation, as the laws of logical inference founded on our previous inductions will enable us to give a speedy solution of the remaining problems, at least so fully as they may be susceptible of scientific explanation.

On the subject of causal unity it may be laid down as a general principle: That in the same sphere of time and space the identity of an efficient is to be concluded from the identity of the phenomena which experience has shown it to be capable of producing. Thus we refer all the electrical facts in the universe to a single imponderable agent; and we always predicate the power of heat whenever we witness its usual and well-known effects. Nevertheless, these instances are only analogous. But the following are precisely in point. The affirmation of a single human being, the truth of his separate existence as a real and rational unit, is inferred alone from his manifestations as a cause in time and space. He stands demonstrated, present or absent, by the power that he develops, or has developed, in his individual sphere. His physical features may change, yet he will still be revealed in his intelligent actions. The divine pictures of a Raphael or a Rubens may be identified for long ages after the hand that sketched the now immortal lineaments of some mortal face has been mouldering, like the lovely original, in darkness and dust. No two persons—that is to say, human causes—present exactly the same effects. Every fact evolved will differ more or less. And, lastly, every cause is manifested as a unit by its occupation or pervasion of a given space.

Applying, then, this axiom of identity to the efficient of natural phenomena, the unity of the great Cause becomes at once apparent. Everywhere we behold the same laws of mathematical harmony. The identical principle of gravitation, which we have proved to be the effect of a sublime rationality, carries us away to the utmost limits of the solar system, and shows us one sovereign efficient, one pervading force, that we may henceforth call God, all over those immeasurable fields of infinite azure. And when this path grows so dim and distant amidst that far-off wilderness of flaming worlds that we can no longer trace the footsteps of attraction, there still remains heaven’s own highway of radiant light to conduct us on and on towards the centre, or perchance it may be the circumference, of the universe, revealing the same God enthroned on every sun; because every ray that flashes from the great blue deep of the firmament preserves the same identical laws of reflection and refraction.

Who can elevate his mind to the contemplation of these amazing and magnificent depths of distance, those profound caverns of space, teeming and sparkling with worlds like crystals? That light which travels almost two hundred thousand miles in a second does not reach us from the star 61 Cygni until after a journey of nine years and three months; and yet that is one of the nocturnal luminaries which may be termed the nearest neighbors of our system. The number of registered stars amount to two hundred thousand; while the entire host accessible to the sweep of the telescope have been reckoned as a hundred millions, from some of which it takes the luminous rays thousands of years to fly down to the earth. What mathematician, then, shall measure this celestial expanse, brimming over with suns and stars, and swarming with galaxies of living flame? Imagination stoops beneath such a giddy summit, nor dares attempt to scale those cliffs of golden fire. Reason, faltering on the brink of that boundless ocean of immensity, recoils as from the verge of annihilation. None but God can walk the heights of those starry pinnacles, and the light that burns and flashes around his feet falls down to man as the proof of the divine presence. In fine, if we had never before known a Deity, the telescope would have revealed him.

The unity of God being established, can we predicate his eternity? In the first place, all history bears witness to the permanence of the same grand principles of causation, since the primary annals of the species; and then geology takes up the subject, and carries it back for countless ages through those records inscribed on the ancient rocks by the pencil of central fire, or the fierce pen of earthquakes and blazing volcanoes; and still everywhere we see the evidence of the same mathematical laws, the same attraction and gravitation. Everything alike shows the existence of the same all-creating Deity as anterior to itself; and further than this the canons of mere induction cannot go.

Nor can the goodness of God be demonstrated in the precise and conclusive manner which has marked our previous propositions. The beauties of nature and the blessings of Providence are sufficient proofs to the majority of mankind; and for all the rest one must depend on _à priori_ reasoning, or look to the clearer light of a divine revelation.

It must be observed that the foregoing argument differs essentially from that of the celebrated Paley. His is founded on the mechanical phenomena of the universe, but this on the mathematical relations of order and harmony—on the present as well as the past physical evolutions in time and space, thus proving the continued agency of the supreme Cause, the Deity, both in immanence and in act.

But it is not my purpose to criticise other theories, nor to answer objections, which must be impotent unless they can overthrow the legitimacy of my inductions. Accordingly, I submit the whole.

Footnote 150:

The following article was recently found in Chicago among the
posthumous papers of Judge Arrington, who died in that city nine years
ago, a convert to the Catholic Church. It was written twenty years
previous, when he was struggling to escape from the meshes of
pantheism, and seems to be a vigorous effort to prove to his own
satisfaction the reality of a personal, rational Deity.

Some of the illustrations are recognized as having been used in a
similar article published in the _Democratic Review_ about thirty
years ago, which was extensively copied, and even translated into the
French and German languages. The present is a much more elaborate
statement than that, as if the author still dwelt upon the subject,
and as the years rolled on wished with increasing knowledge to more
strongly substantiate to his intellect what his higher nature so
instinctively craved.

At the bar Judge Arrington stood almost without a peer in the great
Northwest for legal learning and oratorical power. Whenever he
indulged in the luxury of literary and poetical composition he showed
an ability that promised a like pre-eminence in those pursuits, had he
devoted himself to them.

This struggle of a great mind to fling off the incubus of modern
error, whose every maze he had thoroughly explored, coupled with his
subsequent conversion to Catholicity and his saint-like death in its
communion, is an admirable practical illustration of the truth that
nothing short of the light and grace to be found only in the true
church of Christ can ever thoroughly satisfy a great soul.

Footnote 151:

Judge Arrington had devoted much time and attention to studying the
nature and results of sagacity in animals; but he so distinctly saw
that they are not _responsible agents_, and that the harmonious and
orderly results produced by them—as, for example, the mathematical
regularity of the cells of bees—are to be attributed not to them but
to the Author of their wonderful instinct, that he does not even pause
to treat this as an objection to his proposition or to draw a
distinction between mediate and immediate causes.

PEARL.

BY KATHLEEN O’MEARA, AUTHOR OF “IZA’S STORY,” “A SALON IN THE LAST DAYS OF THE EMPIRE,” “ARE YOU MY WIFE?” ETC.

Early next day Mrs. Monteagle sent down to the entresol to know if Col. Redacre was well enough to come up and see her, or, if not, could she go down and see him; she wanted to speak to him on a matter of importance. The answer came on a card of Mrs. Redacre’s, written in pencil:

“I am so sorry! Hugh is really not able to see any one this morning.
I hope you will come down to-morrow.—Yours affectionately,

“A. R.”

Mrs. Monteagle was surprised. There was nothing in the fact that the colonel was not able to come up-stairs—Balaklava sometimes made a great difficulty about stairs; but why could she not go down to him? The hope that she “would come down to-morrow” was clearly an intimation that she was not to go to-day. Why should she not go and see Mrs. Redacre, even if her husband was not in a humor to see people? The forenoon passed, and neither of the girls came near her. She inquired if the doctor had been sent for, but the servants said not. M. le Colonel had nothing the matter with him; he complained of Balaklava just as usual; there was no question of such an extreme measure as sending for the doctor. This made it all the more curious why an old friend like herself should be kept out for the day. Mrs. Monteagle, however, was not a gossip, and, after turning it in her mind for a reasonable time, she concluded that it was no business of hers, and that it would be a nuisance, having friends living in the same house with one, if one could not be left alone for a day without their seeing a mystery in it.

Late in the afternoon she went out to pay some visits. It was Mme. de Kerbec’s day. Mrs. Monteagle had rather a horror of “days,” but she was pretty regular in attending this one. Mme. de Kerbec was very particular about people calling on her day, and apt to take offence if they neglected it. To her it was the grand recurring opportunity of her life. She loved dress with a passionate love, tenderly, humanly; and her day was an opportunity for doing it honor, making a kind of feast to it. This was a trial to some of her friends; they felt obliged to respond to the challenge and come always finely dressed, and many were not inclined to don their first-best costumes on so ordinary an occasion. People, however, like Mrs. Monteagle, who had passed the age when society exacted this kind of homage from them, found great amusement in looking at the fine fashions, laughing at them very often, and at the mistress of the house, who, fat, fifty, and not fair, sat on her crimson satin sofa, with the latest and most magnificent costume spread out over it.

To-day she was gorgeous in a _Bismarck-en-colère_ moire antique, so trimmed that the original material nearly disappeared under elaborate passementerie, lace, and fringe. Nothing pleased her like being complimented on her dress; and Mrs. Monteagle, though she was fond of snubbing people when they deserved it, was fond, too, of pleasing them, and occasionally gratified this weakness of Captain Jack.

“How beautiful Mme. de Kerbec’s dress looks!” said some one, breaking a pause in the languishing conversation.

“That’s because it _is_ beautiful,” said Mrs. Monteagle in her literal way. “Where do you get those splendid costumes, countess? One does not know which to wonder at most, their magnificence or their variety. I suspect you have a Titania who works some time of the night weaving those lovely silks and making them up into costumes.”

“Oh! no,” said Mme. de Kerbec gravely. “I never would keep my maid up of a night working, and I always tell the dressmaker that I would rather wait any time than have her keep those poor girls up all night at my dresses; but I dare say she does it all the same—they are so selfish, that class of people.”

“Will you tell me the class that is not selfish?” said Mrs. Monteagle; but she happened to catch Mr. Kingspring’s eye, and there was a dangerous twinkle in it which made her look quickly away and observe that there would be a fine display of dresses at the ball to-night, no doubt.

“Yes, I should think there would be,” said Mme. de Kerbec, composing her countenance, as she always did when dress was spoken of, assuming that peculiar gravity of manner which many people put on when anything connected with the life to come is mentioned.

“It is a pity you don’t go to the Tuileries, countess,” said Mr. Kingspring; “you would cut them all out with your dress.”

“It is a pity in one way,” she replied; “but one has a principle or one has not. It would make no end of a scandal if we were to be seen at this court. The count would never be forgiven by the faubourg; and I have to consider his position before my own pleasure.”

“Of course, certainly,” said Mr. Kingspring.

“It is to be an unusually brilliant affair to-night; the Redacres are going, I believe,” some one remarked.

“I fancy not; the colonel is not well,” said Mrs. Monteagle.

“The young ladies are going with Mme. Léopold,” said Mr. Kingspring. “I met her just now, and she told me Mrs. Redacre had written to ask her to chaperone them, as their father would not go.”

Mrs. Monteagle looked at Mr. Kingspring as he announced this, and she fancied there was a glance of answering intelligence in his eyes.

“The colonel is not seriously ill?” inquired Mme. de Kerbec, who was rather proud of her intimacy with the Redacres.

“He’s not ill at all,” said Mr. Kingspring.

“Then why is he sending his daughters to the ball with Mme. Léopold?”

“I really can’t say, unless it be that he is not in a humor to go; a man does not always feel inclined to go to a ball, especially a man like Redacre.”

“Ah! to be sure. Balaklava is a constant trial to him, poor, dear man!” sighed Mme. de Kerbec.

“Have you seen him lately?” inquired Mrs. Monteagle.

“Yes,” said Mr. Kingspring. “I turned in there this morning for a moment. What does M. de Kerbec say of the ‘situation,’ as they call it? Does he think we shall have war?” This was to Mme. de Kerbec.

“He never tells me what he thinks,” said the lady in an aggrieved tone. “I have, in fact, given up asking him. He only cares to talk politics with men; that is the way with most of you.”

Mrs. Monteagle began to be seriously mystified. This sudden interest in M. de Kerbec’s view of the situation did not deceive her. Mr. Kingspring evidently had turned off the conversation from Col. Redacre on purpose. And why? She was not a meddling person or touchy, but really it was enough to set her wondering, this odd behavior of the Redacres. They were distinctly keeping her out of the way while Mr. Kingspring was allowed to come in! And then Mrs. Redacre writing to Mme. Léopold to chaperone the girls to-night! What did it all mean?

Suddenly it flashed on her that they were anxious to bring about a marriage between Pearl and Léon, and had seized on the ball to-night as an opportunity for suggesting the same idea to the Léopolds. On the other hand, this was such a thoroughly un-English way of proceeding that it was hardly fair to suspect the Redacres of adopting it. Pearl, too, was the last girl she knew who would be likely to fall in with such French manœuvring. Altogether it was puzzling. Mrs. Monteagle was angry with Mr. Kingspring, turned her back on him, and began to converse with a French lady near her. People were dropping in in ones and twos, and Mme. de Kerbec was in high delight, sweeping her glittering train behind her as she rose to greet each new-comer. Mrs. Monteagle took advantage of one of these triumphant moments to say good-by, and, without casting a glance on the offending Kingspring, made her exit.

Just as she reached her own porte cochère Mr. Kingspring overtook her.

“Are you going in to see the Redacres?” he said.

“No; Mrs. Redacre sent me word that she hoped I would go to-morrow, which meant evidently that I was not to go to-day.”

“If I were you I would not mind that; I would go at once. You are their oldest friend here; they will be the better for seeing you.”

“There is something amiss, then?” And Mrs. Monteagle forgot her grievance in real concern.

“There is. I can’t tell you any more. They will tell you themselves; you had better go in and see them.”

He shook hands and hurried away, fearing to say more if he loitered with her. Mrs. Monteagle went slowly up to the entresol, and, after an interval of hesitation, she pulled the bell. “The idea of my being nervous at pulling Alice Redacre’s bell!” she said to herself.

It was answered quickly.

“_Madame ne reçoit pas aujourd’hui_,” said the servant.

“She is not well?”

“Madame is a little indisposed; M. le Colonel also.”

Mrs. Monteagle left her compliments and regrets, and went on her way up-stairs.

“It is quite clear they do not wish to see me,” was her comment. “What can it mean? It looks odd—it is odd,” she added, correcting herself, as she was in the habit of doing to other people for the same inaccurate mode of speech.

Great was her surprise an hour later to see the two girls going out on horseback, accompanied by an old general officer who sometimes replaced their father in this way. Would they also go to the ball, in spite of the something that was amiss? They always ran up to show themselves to Mrs. Monteagle in their ball-dress whenever they went out; but she did not expect they would do so this evening. At nine o’clock, however, there was a ring, and in they came. Pearl looked sad, though there was no sign of tears in her face; but Polly looked, as she always did on occasions like this, a vision of triumphant beauty. Her blue-black eyes were all aglow with soft, tender lightnings, her curved red lips parted, her delicate skin bright as tinted alabaster. If the combined misfortunes of life had fallen on her as she stood there in her exulting loveliness, Polly might have defied them. She looked a creature born to happiness, buoyant, supple, invulnerable; you might as well have tried to hurt the mounting flame by sticking pins in it as to quench the glory of her youth in that royally beautiful maiden.

“Does she not look pretty?” said Pearl, surveying the young queen proudly.

“She _is_ pretty, you vain puss!” said Mrs. Monteagle. “But why do you always wear white, my dear? Pink would suit your brown eyes better, eh?”

“White is Polly’s color, and any color does for me,” said Pearl.

“Papa likes us to dress alike,” said Polly; “and pink does not go very well with my hair.”

“Tut, nonsense, child! Duckady mud would go well with your hair,” said the old lady. “But Pearl spoils you—that’s what it is.”

“She does indeed!” said Polly heartily, and she twined her lovely arms around Pearl and kissed her.

A voice came from the stairs announcing that Mme. Léopold’s carriage was at the door. The two girls kissed Mrs. Monteagle and hurried away, looking very like a couple of swans as they floated off with their waves of white tulle round them.

“Come up early to-morrow morning and tell me all about it,” said Mrs. Monteagle in a _sotto voce_ to Pearl; “of course it will be settled to-night.”

Pearl blushed up, and there was a sudden look of distress on her face as with an exclamation of protest she hastened after Polly.