Miss Madeline, the youngest, was
handsome, distinguished-looking, intellectual, passionate, and proud.

Mrs. Marmaduke's heart was set on marrying her daughters
"advantageously," and she gave all of her narrow mind to that thankless
department. Josephine insisted on a romantic attachment, and pursued a
visionary spouse with all the ardor and obstinacy of first-rate
stupidity. Adelaide had the weakness to hate Josephine, the shrewdness
to fear Madeline, and the viciousness to despise her mother; she
skilfully and diligently devoted herself to the thwarting of the
family. Madeline waited, only waited,--with a fierceness so dangerously
still that it looked like patience,--hated her insulting bondage, but
waited, like Samson between the pillars upon which the house of Dagon
stood, resolved to free herself, though she dragged down the edifice
and were crushed among the wreck.

Mrs. Marmaduke talked tediously of the trials and responsibilities of
conscientious mothers who have grown-up daughters to provide for, was
given to frequent freshets of tears, consumed many "nervous pills" of
the retired-clergyman-whose-sands-of-life-have-nearly-run-out sort, and
netted bead purses for the Select Home for Poor Gentlemen's Daughters.
Josephine let down her back hair dowdily, partook recklessly of poetry
and pickles, read inordinately in bed,--leaning all night on her
elbow,--and was threatened with spinal curvature and spiritualism.
Adelaide set invisible little traps in every nook and cranny, every
cupboard and drawer, from basement to attic, and with a cheerful,
innocent smile sat watching them night and day. Madeline, fiercely
calm, warned off the others, with pale lips and flashing eyes and
bitter tongue, resenting _en famille_ the devilish endearments she so
sweetly suffered in company; but ever as she groped about in her soul's
blindness she felt for the central props of that house of Dagon.

All the good society of Hendrik said the Splurges were a charming
family, a most attached and happy family, lovely in their lives an