The young man suspected that Cephas had prohibited the front room; he was indignant about that, and the way in which Charlotte had been summoned in from the entry, and he had no diplomacy.
Charlotte, under her calm exterior, grew uneasy; she glanced at her mother, who glanced back.

It was to both women as if they felt by some subtle sense the brewing of a tempest.

Charlotte unobtrusively moved her chair a little nearer her lover's; her purple delaine skirt swept his knee; both of them blushed and trembled with Cephas's black eyes upon them.
Charlotte never knew quite how it began, but her father suddenly flung out a dangerous topic like a long-argued bone of contention, and he and Barnabas were upon it.

Barnabas was a Democrat, and Cephas was a Whig, and neither ever forgot it of the other.

None of the women fairly understood the point at issue; it was as if they drew back their feminine skirts and listened amazed and trembling to this male hubbub over something outside their province.