Page:The Berkeleys and their neighbors.djvu/45

 "But the widow—Eliza Peyton—eh, Cole? I think you have made some headway there," cried the Colonel, wagging his head at the little clergyman. Mr. Cole's heart began to thump. Strange it was that although he ought, as a Christian and a clergyman, to disapprove of Madame Koller with her beautiful blonde hair, he could not find it in his heart to feel it. Nevertheless he could say it easily enough.

"I very much doubt, sir, the propriety of my visiting at The Beeches."

"Pooh, pooh. You'll get over it," chuckled Colonel Berkeley.

Ah, John Chrysostom! Has it never been known that the outward man denounced what the inward man yearned and hankered after? At this very moment do you not remember the turn of Madame Koller's handsome head, and the faint perfume that exhaled from her trailing gown?

"We must invite them to dinner," said the Colonel, decidedly. "Cole, you must come, too. That poor devil, Ahlberg, is almost starved at the tavern on fried chicken three times a day, and claret from the tavern bar."