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Updated: June 4, 2025
"Have I assumed too much," said Leadbury, gravely, relaxing somewhat the tightness of his embrace. "Have I, arguing from the fact that you both served me in the crisis of my career and saved my life, assumed too much in believing you love me? If so, I beg your pardon for arranging this surprise. I will release you.
There were but two guests at the table of Mr. William Leadbury Judge Volney Bording, and his daughter, Eulalia Bording. Mr. Leadbury cast a look of surprise and displeasure as he saw Clarissa serving the first course, but he quickly concealed these emotions and proceeded to plunge into an animated conversation with his guests.
Leadbury half rose, looking toward Clarissa with a glance of most violent anger, but whatever he would have said, was again interrupted by the silvery laugh of Miss Bording, and again Leadbury joined heartily, almost boisterously.
Judge Volney Bording, ornament to the legal profession, was a hearty eater, and it was not long before he sent his plate for a second helping, and again Clarissa heard from the closed lips of Leadbury, in a voice that seemed to float up from his very feet: "Next. Next. You're next, Miss Bording. What'll it be?"
But, Captain Leadbury, tell me of your cousin, who disappeared two days after your arrival, and why you shaved your moustache which the papers described you as having." "A moustache is a bother," said Leadbury. "As to my cousin, why, overcome by disappointment, he took to drink. He disappeared from his lodgings on Rush Street two days after my arrival, at the close of a twenty-four hours' debauch.
Clarissa preceded the others as they slowly descended, with all her ears open to hear whatsoever William Leadbury might say to Eulalia Bording, and it was so that she noted a strange little creaking above them, and looking up, saw poised upon the edge of the balustrade in the upper hall, impending over the head of William Leadbury and ready to fall, the great barber chair!
"Don't you remember that I engaged the second two-step at the Charity Ball?" Clarissa, almost swooning with joy as she reclined palpitating upon the manly breast of Captain William Leadbury, said never a word, for the power of speech was not in her; the power of song, of uttering peans of joy, perhaps, but not the power of speech.
"His breath is knocked out of him," said Miss Bording. "He saved my life. I cannot understand his strange devotion. I cannot understand it," said William Leadbury, the while opening the page's vest, tearing away his collar, and straining at his shirt, that the stunned lungs might have play and get to work again.
In the midst of a pause where he was occupied in putting his soup-spoon into his mouth, Miss Bording remarked: "Please do not talk about commonplace American subjects, Mr. Leadbury. Tell us of your foreign life. Tell us of Algeria. What sort of a country is Algeria?"
"Oh, yes," said Leadbury, gaily, responding to a remark of Miss Bording, as they entered the room and saw the uncertain shape of a large chair vaguely looming in the gloom; "I secured the fauteuil of Ab del Kader after we had stormed the last stronghold of that unfortunate prince.
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