Then the Colonel, too, moved off.
Two or three times over, as he ambled homeward, laughter broke through his annoyance, as he recalled old Charlie's family pride and the presumption of his offer.

Yet each time he could but think better of--not the offer to swap, but the preposterous ancestral loyalty.

It was so much better than he could have expected from his "low-down" relative, and not unlike his own whim withal--the proposition which went with it was forgiven.
This last defeat bore so harshly on the master of Belles Demoiselles, that the daughters, reading chagrin in his face, began to repent.

They loved their father as daughters can, and when they saw their pretended dejection harassing him seriously they restrained their complaints, displayed more than ordinary tenderness, and heroically and ostentatiously concluded there was no place like Belles Demoiselles.

But the new mood touched him more than the old, and only refined his discontent.