Across the Chasm

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WILLIAM WALDORF ASTOR VALENTINO: AN HISTORICAL ROMANCE ARLO BATES A WHEEL OF FIRE H. H. BOYESEN FALCONBERG MRS. BURNETT THAT LASS O’ LOWRIE’S “ “ VAGABONDIA: A LOVE STORY G. W. CABLE JOHN MARCH, SOUTHERNER EDITH CARPENTER YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE EDWARD EGGLESTON THE CIRCUIT RIDER HAROLD FREDERIC THE LAWTON GIRL ROBERT GRANT FACE TO FACE MARION HARLAND JUDITH: A CHRONICLE OF OLD VIRGINIA JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS FREE JOE AND OTHER SKETCHES JULIAN HAWTHORNE A FOOL OF NATURE J. G. HOLLAND SEVENOAKS: A STORY OF TO-DAY “ “ THE BAY PATH: A TALE OF COLONIAL LIFE “ “ ARTHUR BONNICASTLE: AN AMERICAN STORY “ “ MISS GILBERT’S CAREER “ “ NICHOLAS MINTURN COM’R J. D. J. KELLEY A DESPERATE CHANCE G. P. LATHROP AN ECHO OF PASSION JULIA MAGRUDER ACROSS THE CHASM BRANDER MATTHEWS THE LAST MEETING DONALD G. MITCHELL DREAM LIFE “ “ REVERIES OF A BACHELOR HOWARD PYLE WITHIN THE CAPES “Q” (A. T. QUILLER-COUCH) THE SPLENDID SPUR “ “ “ THE DELECTABLE DUCHY R. L. STEVENSON THE EBB-TIDE “ “ TREASURE ISLAND “ “ THE WRONG BOX F. J. STIMSON GUERNDALE FRANK R. STOCKTON RUDDER GRANGE “ “ THE LADY OR THE TIGER

Across The Chasm

By Julia Magruder

New York Charles Scribner’S Sons 1899

Copyright, 1885, By Charles Scribner’S Sons.

Manhattan Press 474 W. Broadway New York

Across The Chasm.

Chapter I.

Margaret Trevennon was young and beautiful. Her faithful biographer can say no less, though aware of the possibility that, on this account, the satiated reader of romances may make her acquaintance with a certain degree of reluctance, reflecting upon the two well-worn types--the maiden in the first flush of youth, who is so immaculately lovely as to be extremely improbable, and the maturer female, who is so strong-minded as to be wholly ineligible to romantic situations. If there be only these two classes Miss Trevennon must needs be ranged with the former. Certainly the particular character of her beauty foreordained her to romantic situations, although it must be said, on the other hand, that the term “strong-minded” was one which had been more than once applied to her by those who should have known her best.

She lived with her parents on the outskirts of a small Southern town, in a dilapidated old house, that had once been a grand mansion. The days of its splendid hospitality had passed away long since, and as far back as Margaret’s memory went the same monotonous tranquillity had pervaded its lofty corridors and spacious rooms. In spite of this, however, it was a pleasant, cheerful home, and the girl’s life, up to her nineteenth year, had been passed very happily in it. She had had occasional changes of scene, such as a visit to New Orleans or a brief season at some small Southern watering-place; but she had never been North, and so by birth and circumstance, as well as by instinct and training, she was a genuine Southern girl. The fact that Mr. Trevennon had managed to save from the wreck of his large fortune a small independence, had afforded his daughter the opportunity of seeing something of men and manners beyond her own hearthstone, and this, together with her varied and miscellaneous reading, gave her a range of vision wider and higher than that enjoyed by the other young people of Bassett, and had imbued her with certain theories and opinions which made them regard her as eccentric.

One bright autumnal day, when the weather was still warm and sunny in this fair Southern climate, Miss Trevennon, clad in an airy white costume, and protected from the sun by a veil and parasol, took her way with the rather quick motions usual with her, down the main street of Bassett. When she reached the corner on which Martin’s drug store was situated, she crossed over and passed down on the opposite side; but, doubly screened as she was, she turned her eyes in that direction and took a hurried survey of the loungers assembled on the pavement. Perhaps it was because her gaze especially sought him out that she saw Charley Somers first. This was a young man who had been her unrequited adorer, hoping against hope, ever since they had gone to the village school together, and Margaret had all her life been trying, in a flashing, impetuous way that she had, to fire him with some of the energy and enthusiasm which she herself possessed so abundantly, and in which this pleasant, easy, indolent young Southerner was so absolutely lacking. Young Somers had come of a long line of affluent and luxurious ancestors, and though cut off from an inheritance in their worldly possessions, he had fallen heir to many of their personal characteristics, which hung about him like fetters of steel.

Although Miss Trevennon hurriedly averted her gaze after that one swift glance, she had received a distinct impression of Mr. Somers’ whole manner and attitude, as he sat with his chair tipped back against the wall, his heels caught on its topmost round, his straw hat pushed back from his delicate, indolent face, and a pipe between his lips. In this way he would sit for hours, ringing the changes on the somewhat restricted theme of county politics with the loungers who frequented “Martin’s.” The mere thought of it, much more the sight, infuriated Miss Trevennon. She could not grow accustomed to it, in spite of long habituation.

As she tripped along, erect and quick, she heard a familiar footstep behind her, and in a moment more was joined by the young man.

“Where are you going?” he said, giving his hat a little careless push and re-settlement, without lifting it from his head. “May I go with you and carry your basket?”

“If you like,” said Margaret, distantly, yielding up to him the little white-covered basket. “I am going to see Uncle Mose.”

“As usual! What has Uncle Mose done to be so petted? I wish you would treat me with half as much consideration.”

“I don’t think you entitled to it,” she answered. “Uncle Mose is at the end of a long life of continuous, patient labor, and has won a right to my consideration, which you never have. You have often heard me say, of course, that ever since I’ve been able to form an opinion at all, I’ve been a thorough-going Abolitionist; but all the same, I think there is virtue in a system which _makes_ a man work, whether he wills it or not. Servitude itself seems to me a nobler life than absolute idleness.”

“Oh, the same old thing!” said the young man, wearily. “I wonder when you will give up expecting me to be a paragon!”

“I’ve given it up long ago. I’ve seen the futility of any such expectation; but I will never give up wishing that you would be a man, and do something worthy of a man.”

“You can’t say I don’t work. I attend to my cases, and am always on hand during court week.”

“Provided it doesn’t clash with fishing week or hunting week, or any pursuit that happens to offer a more attractive prospect than that of discussing county politics and smoking bad tobacco with some other loungers at ‘Martin’s’!”

“I know I am not what you like,” said Somers despondently; “but there is one thing that would make me different. If you would give me some hope for the future----”

“I begged you never to say that again,” interrupted Margaret, quickly. “You know how indignant it makes me, and the worst of it is that you really believe it to be true. If you won’t do right for right’s sake, you would never do it for mine.”

He made no answer to her words. But one form of response suggested itself, and to that he knew she was in no mood to listen; so, for the space of a few moments, they walked along in silence. But Margaret’s thoughts were very active, and presently she broke out:

“Why, Charley, when I heard you complaining the other day, that the tailor who has a shop opposite you kept you from sleeping in the morning by his violin practice begun at daylight, I remembered how you had told me once that you frequently saw him at his work until after midnight; and do you know what I thought? I thought: I wish to goodness Charley would try to be a little more like him.”

“What do you mean?” the young man cried, angrily. “You don’t know what you are talking about. Do you think I could ever so far forget myself as to imitate a beastly little Yankee tailor, or to desire to be like him in any way whatever? I can stand a good deal from you, Margaret, but this is a little too much!”

“Of course! His happening to be a Yankee puts him down at once. But I can tell you what it is, Charley, there is one lesson you might profitably learn from him, and that the most important in the world for you. It is, to make something of the powers you have. That poor little man has no possibilities, I suppose, beyond the attainment of a certain degree of skill in making clothing, on the one hand, and learning to play popular airs indifferently on a cracked little fiddle, on the other. But with you, how different it is! Papa says you would be an able lawyer, but for the trifling obstacle that you don’t know any law. We all know how well you talk, on those rare occasions on which you become really interested. And as to the other point, the music--oh, Charley, what mightn’t your voice become, if you would avail yourself of the means of cultivation within your reach? But no! Your teacher told you that you must practise patiently and continuously to procure its proper development, and this you would not do; it was too troublesome!”

“Trouble apart,” said Somers, “the notion does not please me, and I must say I wonder that you, who make such a point of manliness in a man, should favor any one’s regularly preparing himself to be the sort of drawing-room pet that one of your trained song-singers is certain to become.”

“You _can_ say the most aggravating things!” said Margaret. “Is it possible that you can consider it unmanly to cultivate such a gift as that? But what’s the use of all this? You don’t care.”

“No, I don’t care much,” he answered slowly. “When a man has one supreme, paramount care forever possessing him, and is constantly being told that the object of his desires is beyond his reach, other things don’t matter very much.”

At the sight of the weary discontent on his handsome face, her heart softened, and as they stopped before the little cabin, which was their destination, she said kindly:

“Come in and see Uncle Mose with me, won’t you?”

But the young man excused himself rather hurriedly, and delivering the basket into her hands he said good-morning, and walked rapidly back toward the town.

Margaret pushed open the door of the wretched little cabin, and just within sat Uncle Mose, engaged in his customary avocation of shoemaking, or to speak more accurately, shoe-mending. He was a spare and sinewy old negro, whose age, according to his own account, was “somewhar high up in de nineties.” He was much bowed in figure, and lame in one leg. Bushy tufts of dull gray hair rose on each side of his brown and polished crown, and his wrinkled and sunken cheeks were quite beardless. His expression was one of placid benevolence and contentment--a strange contrast to his surroundings. The room he occupied was hideously squalid and confused. The roof sloped in one direction and the floor in another, and the stove, which was unreasonably large, in a third. Old phials, suspended by their necks and partly filled with muddy liquids, decorated the walls, together with a pair of patched boots, a string of red peppers, several ears of pop-corn, and a leather-covered whipstock. In one corner hung a huge walking cane. Everything was thickly coated with dust.

The old man was seated near the perilously one-sided stove, in which a fire smoked and smouldered, though it was a balmy day, and in front of which a rusty old iron spade did duty for a door. His few old tools and pegs and twines were on a broken chair beside him. When he looked up, over the top of his brass-rimmed spectacles, and saw who his visitor was, he broke into a broad smile of welcome, as he raised his withered old hand to his head in token of salutation.

“Dat you, missis?” he said. “What bin fetch you out dis time o’ day? I is glad to see you, sho’. Come in, en take a seat.”

He swept his tools and twines from the wooden seat to the floor, and rubbed the dusty surface several times with his hard palm. Margaret at once sat down, laying her long white draperies across her lap, to protect them from the dusty floor, showing a pair of neat little boots as she did so. Then she took off the cover of the basket, and revealed its contents to the old man’s delighted gaze.

“Well, missis, to be sho’!” he exclaimed, his features relaxing in a grin of anticipative enjoyment, “Light bread, en chicken, en grapes! en what’s dis, missis? Gemarna![A] Whoo! How come you bin know so good what I done bin hankerin’ arter? I gwine tase a little, right now.”

And using his shoemaking weapon as knife, fork and spoon indifferently, he fell to in earnest. He had probably been honest in his intention of only tasting a little, feeling it perhaps a lack of decorum to eat in the presence of his guest; but once embarked on the alluring enterprise, he was in no humor to relax, and, uttering from time to time expressive ejaculations of enjoyment, he went on and on, until only the fruit remained. As he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, he drew a long sigh of contented repletion.

“Dat wor good, sure ’nuff, missis,” he said. “White folks’ vittles tase mighty chice to me now, I tell you.”

“I’m glad you liked it, Uncle Mose,” said Margaret. “But tell me--I always meant to ask you--where that immense stick came from. Did any one ever use it?”

“What, dat air ole stick, missis? Why, bress you, honey, dat air ole stick wor ole mars’r’s, whar he bin use ter take when he druv out in de kyarrge, arter he bin git so big en fat. Yes, missis; he bin put he han’s on de top en res’ he chin on ’em, en when I bin had ter git out’n de ole place, de bin gin it ter me fur a sort o’ memorandum.”

“You were mighty fond of your old master, weren’t you, Uncle Mose?” asked Margaret.

“Ah, dat’s a fac’, missis--dat’s a fac’. Ole mars’r war mighty good to us. De wor three hund’rd on us, en he wor de mars’r, en we had ter know it. He done bin gin he niggers mighty good chance, ole mars’r is. Ebery man bin had he pig en he chickens, en ole mars’r he buy de young chickens en de eggs, en pay us de market price fur ’em. Yes, missis.”

“And what would you do with the money, Uncle Mose?” Margaret asked.

“Dress my wife, missis. Lor’ yes, dress my wife, en Queen. Queen war my oldes’ daughter; en if you b’lieve me, missis, I dress dem two niggers same as de done bin white. I bin lucky nigger all my life, missis. Ole mars’r wor good enough, en when he bin die en young Rawjer take de place, t’war mos’ same as hebben. I dunno _how_ come young Rawjer wor so mile, for all he par wor so blusterin’. You see ole mars’r he mighty quick en hot-heddy. He let out at you sometimes, en hawler ’twel you think he gwine tar you to pieces; but done you be skeered, missis; he ain’ gwine hit you a lick. When de new overseers’d come, ole mars’r he ’low de mus’ keep us down en work us hard, but Lor’ missis, he ain’ mean it. He gwine watch mighty close nobody don’ ’buse his niggers, en he giv’ ’em plenty good food to eat, and see it done bin cook right, too. De did’n have no plates en knives to eat with. No missis; but what dem niggers want long o’ plates en knives? De ain’ got no right to complain cause de ain’ eat offn chany. De needn’t think ole mars’r gwine let em come sit down at his table long o’ him, ’kus he worn’ gwine do it, en he _did’n_ do it. No, missis.”

The old man’s tone was one of vehement indorsement of his master’s policy, that there could be no mistaking.

“Did you marry one of your own master’s slaves, Uncle Mose?” asked Margaret, presently.

“No, missis,” Uncle Mose responded blandly; “I marry a gal whar ’long to one Mr. _Fitz_hugh. De war heap o’ likely gals whar ’long to ole mars’r, some bright yaller, and some black ez coals, en some mos’ white, but seem like I could’n make up my mine to marry air one on ’em, I dunno _what_ make I could’n take to ’em, but ’t’war no use! I bin sot my eyes on a tall black gal, over to Mars’r George _Fitz_hugh’s, en ebery other Sad’dy ole mars’r lemme knock off early en go see her. She done bin younger’n me, some odd yeers, en I tell her I wor’n’ gwine cheat ’er. I tell her she mought look roun’ a while, ’fo’ we bin settle de thing. So, eff you b’lieve me, missis, I bin wait on her three yeers, ’fo’ she compose her mine to marry me.”

“Well, and what became of her?” said Margaret, as he paused ruminatively.

“Alter ’bout fo’ yeers, missis, she wor sole away, Liza wor,” he said in tones as benign and free from resentment as ever. “Lor’ me, missis, how well I mine dat day! I bin’ come up from de fiel’ like t’wor down datterway” (suiting the action to the word), “de paff run long by de cabin do’ pretty much. It wor like it done bin dis pass Chewsdy dat I come up to de do’, en Aun’ Tetsy, she tell me she heer ’Liza done bin sole. I stop short like, en I say ‘_what?_’ en she tell me agin, en say she bin heer’d de done fotch her down to town ter take her off in de drove. I struck out for de great-’us at dat, en I tell ole mars’r all ’bout it. ‘Knock off work, Mose,’ ole mars’r say, ‘en go to town en see eff she’s thar. ’T’ain’ no use try ter keep her, but mebbe you can see her en de chillun one’t mo’. You kin take White-foot.’ I prick up my yeers at dat, for White-foot war de fleetes’ horse ole mars’r got. Lor’, missis, I wish yer could ’a see dat filly. De ain’ no sich hosses now. Her legs war clean en straight ez a poplar, en her coat----”

“But, Uncle Mose, go on about ’Liza.”

“’T’war no use, missis,” he said, with a patient head-shake. “When I got to town I bin hurry to de jail to see eff de bin lodge de gang in dar, but de tell me ’Liza bin gone off wid de rest on ’em dat very mornin’.”

He ceased speaking, and sat staring in front of him in a preoccupied and ruminative way, from which Margaret saw it would be necessary to recall him.

“Well--what else, Uncle Mose?” she said gently; “what finally became of your wife?”

“Which wife, missis?” he replied, rousing himself by an effort, and looking about him blankly; “I had three on ’em.”

Margaret refrained from asking whether it had been a case of “trigamy,” or whether they had been successive, and said:

“You were telling me about ’Liza’s being sold away. Did you never see her again?”

“No, missis,” the old man answered gently. “I never see ’Liza no mo’. I see a man whar met her on de road, en he say she bin had de baby in her arms, walkin’ ’long wid de gang, en de t’other chile wor in de cart wid de balance o’ de chillun, en he say ’Liza busted out a-cryin’, en ’low he mus’ tell her ole man, eff we did’n meet no mo’ here b’low, she hope to meet in Hebben. En he ax her den whar she gwine ter, en she say she dunno, she think she bin heerd em say t’wor Alabammer; en dat’s de las’ word I ever heer o’ ’Liza. Yes, missis.”

Another meditative pause followed, and Margaret’s sympathetic eyes could see that he was far back in the past.

“I bin had a daughter sole away, too, missis,” he went on presently. “Yes, missis. She ’long to one Mr. Lane. He bin a hard mars’r, en he treated on her mighty bad, ’twel arter while she run off en went en put herself in jail. Yes, missis.”

“How could she put herself in jail?”

“Dat how de do, missis. You see, when she bin run away, eff she done git caught, de have to put her in jail. So she jes’ go en give herself up, en say she won’ go back ter Mr. Lane,--she be sole fust! So arter Mr. Lane fine out she one o’dat sort, he sole her. It so happen dat my brother Sawney wor gwine ’long de road, en she wor passin’ in de cart, en she hawler out: ‘Howdy, Unc’ Sawney!’ en Sawney say: ‘Hi! who dat know me, en I don’ know dem?’ En she say: ‘Lor’ Unc’ Sawney, don’t you know Unc’ Mose’s Queen?’ En Sawney say: ‘Hi, Queen! Dat ain’ you! Whar you gwine to?’ En she say: ‘I dunno, I ruther fer ter go ennywhere den to stay whar I done bin.’ En I ain’ never heerd o’ Queen since.”

At this point the old man was seized with a fit of coughing, which he made great efforts to repress, and fluently apologized for.

“You must excuse me, young missis,” he said. “I bin cotch a bad cole, en it cough me all day en cough me all night, clar ’twel mornin’. I’se gettin’ mighty ole en shacklin’. Yes, missis.

“De all been mighty good to me, missis,” went on Uncle Mose, after a short pause, “from ole mars’r down. I hope to meet ’em all in Hebben. Ole mars’r ain’ bin much fer religion in he life; but he die a mighty peaceful, happy death, en he forgive all he enemies. He bin kind en merciful, en I ’low de Lord’ll take him in. He always give his niggers heap o’ religious encouragement, en when we bin go to de lick to be _bab_tize, he bin gin us de fines’ kind o’ notes to de preacher, en eff you bin tell a lie or steal a chicken he ain’ gwine say de fuss word ’bout it. Ef he come roun’ to de cabin while we bin had meetin’, he ain’ gwine make no ’sturbance. He wait roun’ ’twel we done sing de Doxoligum, en den he say what he come fer.”

“Your religion has been a great comfort to you, Uncle Mose--hasn’t it?” said Margaret, making an effort to keep back an irrepressible smile.

“Ah, dat’s a fac’, missis--dat’s a fac’, it has. Sometime it animate me very strong, en make me tower high ’bove de world; but den agin, sometime de very las’ bit on it takes to flight, en ef you b’lieve me, missis, I ain’ got no more religion den de palm o’ your han’!”

“The greatest saints have complained of that, Uncle Mose,” said Margaret; “it is one of the devil’s strongest temptations.”

“What, ole Sat’n, missis? Talk to me ’bout ole Sat’n! Don’t I know him? You just give him de chance en he gwine fight you, mean enough!”

Margaret, much amused, was about to make a move to go, when Uncle Mose arrested her intention by saying:

“En so Mars’ Rawjer got a little gal gwine git married. Well, well, well! Is I ever bin tell you, missis, ’bout de time I whip young Rawjer? Ha! ha! ha! I tell you, missis, I whale him good. He make me mad one day, ’bout ketchin de white folks’ hosses, en I break me a little sprout, whar sprung up ’side a ole stump, in de very fiel’ I help to clar forty yeers ago, en I warm he jacket fer him, good fashion. I mighty feared he gwine tell he par, but arter I git up by de stable, I does take my han’ en slap it ’gin de stone fence, en one de little white boys say, ‘I tell you, Uncle Mose kin hit hard’; en I say ‘Ah, dat I kin, chile; dat’s a fac;’ en eff you b’lieve me, I skeered dat chile so bad, he ain’ never tell he par yit;” and Uncle Mose went off into a long chuckle of delight. “When he bin git married en bring he wife home, we all went up to de house to see ’em, en drink de healths, en he tell de young missis this war Mose whar bin gin him that air whippin’ he bin tole her ’bout. She war mighty pretty little thing, wid yaller hair en great big sof’ blue eyes, en a little han’ ez sof’ en white ez snow. I was mos’ feared to ketch hold on it, wid my ole black paw, but she would shake han’s wid me, en she ’lowed maybe t’wor dat whippin’ what make her husman sich a good man, en Mars’ Rawjer he look at her fit to eat her up. She bin use ter gin out to de han’s, arter she come, but Aun’ Kitty she tote de smoke-’us key.”

As Margaret rose to take leave, the old man rose also.

“I mighty proud’n dat dinner you bin fotch me, missis,” he said. “Give my ’spects to yo’ par en mar, en call agin, missis.” And he lifted his cap and bowed her out with punctilious politeness.

As Margaret took her way homeward from the old negro’s cabin, she was conscious of a more than usual softness in her heart for Uncle Mose and his reminiscences, and all the customs and traditions of which he was the exponent. Even Charley Somers seemed less reprehensible than he had been an hour ago, for the old man’s talk had brought before her mind a system of things of which the inertia and irresponsibleness that jarred upon her so, in the people around her, seemed the logical outgrowth. She had often been told that her father, when a small boy, had been every day drawn to and from his school in a diminutive coach pulled by ten little negroes; and a number of similar anecdotes which she could recall gave her an insight into the absolute difference between that _régime_ and the present, that made her somewhat ashamed of her intolerance, and mollified considerably her feeling toward young Somers, whom she determined to serve more kindly at their next interview. She was prompted further to this resolve by the fact that she had something to break to the young man, which she feared would go rather hard with him.

An opportunity which she had often longed for, to see the great world beyond her own section of country, and observe the manners and habits of men and women whose circumstances and traditions were directly opposed to her own, had been offered recently by a letter, received from a cousin who had married an army officer and was living in Washington, which conveyed an invitation for her to make her a visit. Her father and mother highly approved the plan and it seemed settled that she was to go, and while she longed for the new experience, she found her thoughts dwelling rather tenderly on the dear old home and friends, of whom, it seemed to her now, she had been ungratefully impatient.

Chapter II.

A few weeks later, Miss Trevennon found herself domesticated in her cousin’s house in Washington, with surroundings so unfamiliar and circumstances so new to her that she found something to excite her interest and surprise almost every hour in the day. The perfect appointments of the house, which was gotten up with all the appliances of modern art, delighted and diverted her at every turn. “The mud-scraper,” she wrote her mother, in her first letter home, “is a thing of beauty, and the coal-scuttle a joy forever.”

There were no children in the family, which consisted only of General and Mrs. Gaston and a bachelor brother of the former, who made his home with them, although a large portion of his time was spent in New York. Margaret had already been an inmate of the house for ten days, and as yet had not seen him. Mrs. Gaston, however, informed her that he might appear at any moment, his trips to and from New York being too frequent to entail the formality of announcing himself.

Mrs. Gaston was a very clever and agreeable woman and pretended, with some reason, to know the world. Her marriage had been considered quite a brilliant one, as General Gaston’s position, both social and official, was extremely good, and he had quite a large private fortune in addition to his pay. He was not so clever as his wife, but more thoughtful and perhaps more sincere. It was a successful marriage, and the Gaston establishment was tasteful and well ordered. Mrs. Gaston, whose health was indifferent, kept her room a good deal when she could escape the exactions of society, which she never allowed herself to shirk; and her husband was so much absorbed in his official and social duties that Margaret was often alone.

“I am afraid you are frequently dull, my dear,” Mrs. Gaston said to her cousin one morning, as the latter sat beside her couch in the little dressing-room where the invalid was taking her breakfast. “It will be brighter for you when the season fairly opens; but I purposely begged you to come now, so that we might have time to make acquaintance while we are quiet. I wish Louis would come home, but there’s never any counting on him, he’s so frightfully busy all the time. I never saw a man work so hard in my life.”

Margaret looked a little puzzled: “I thought you told me----” she began,

“That he is well off? So he is. He has quite a nice little fortune and there’s no earthly reason why he should work so hard, except that he likes it; and from that point of view I don’t blame him. ‘Pleasure the way you like it,’ is an axiom for which I have a profound respect, and Louis undoubtedly finds his chief pleasure in application to his profession.”

“What is his profession?” Margaret asked; for, although it was evident that Mrs. Gaston was very fond of her brother-in-law, she had, for some reason, said very little about him to her cousin.

“He’s an architect--I thought you knew--Ames & Gaston. Have you never heard of them?”

“No,” said Margaret, shaking her head and smiling, “but that does not go for much. I am finding out that I have never heard of most things.”

“It’s really quite delightful that you never heard of Ames & Gaston,” said Cousin Eugenia, laughing. “I shall inform Louis promptly, though he won’t believe it, or if he does he’ll set it down to the obtuseness of Southern people--a foregone conclusion in his mind! I must tell you that I anticipate some pleasure in seeing you enlighten him on that score.”

“I am afraid I shall not be able to do much,” said Margaret. “I do feel myself extremely ignorant by the side of General Gaston and yourself, especially when you talk of modern literature and art and music.”

“You need not, I assure you. We are neither of us more than ‘cleverly smattered’ on these subjects. Edward knows more than I do, though every one, himself included, believes the contrary. It’s quite another thing with Louis, however; he’s a swell at that sort of thing, and is really thorough, and yet, do you know, I sometimes manage to impose on him immensely and make him think I’ve penetrated to the very root and fibre of a matter, when in reality I have only the most superficial knowledge of it? But all this is a digression. There was something I wanted to say to you. It was about Edward’s people. You know about the Gastons, I suppose?”

Margaret looked slightly puzzled. “What do you mean?” she said.

“Oh! I mean about their name and history and family traditions. It’s an old Puritan family and one of the most illustrious in New England. I read somewhere the other day, that it was one of the few really historical families in America, and I have no desire to speak disrespectfully of them, only I do think they make an unnecessary amount of fuss with themselves. Oh! I _must_ tell you about my first interview with Mr. Alexander M. Gaston. You know who he is!”

“Really, I do not,” said Margaret, lifting her eyebrows with a deprecating smile.

“Well, you _are_ green! but, however, it’s unnecessary to enlighten you now, except to say that he is Edward’s uncle, and the head of the great house of Gaston. He’s been governor and senator and foreign minister and all sorts of things, and is now one of the most eminent men in New England, and a very excellent and accomplished gentleman. Well, soon after I became engaged to Edward he came to call upon me, and I must say his whole manner and attitude toward me were rather amazing. He was good enough to say that he welcomed me into the family, but he took pains to intimate that I was about to be the recipient of a great honor. The Gastons, he explained, had been for centuries leaders of public thought and opinion in their own State, and he was obliging enough to supply me with the dates of the landing in New England of the founders of the house, and to dwell upon their prominence among the early Puritans. I listened respectfully to this tirade, and by the time it came to a conclusion I had my little speech ready, and when he took my hand and formally welcomed me into the great house of Gaston, I replied by saying that I knew it ought to be a source of much satisfaction to Edward and myself that we were, in our small way, doing something toward healing an old breach. ‘My ancestors were Cavaliers,’ I said, ‘and for a Cavalier to marry a Puritan, is, even at this late day, helping at least a little to wipe out the memory of a long-standing feud.’ Now, I flatter myself that was rather neat.”

“Oh, Cousin Eugenia, how perfectly delicious!” exclaimed Margaret, with an outburst of gay laughter. “And what did he say?”

“I don’t exactly remember, my dear, but it was something clever and adroit. I know he retired very gracefully, and bore me no malice. He has been very kind to me always, and I am said to be his favorite of all his nephews’ wives. He is really a dear old boy, and quite worthy of all the adulation he receives, if only they wouldn’t put it on the ground of ancestry. Why, the founder of the family was engaged in some sort of haberdashery business in London! It’s odd, the inconsistencies one meets with! But I’m inured to it all now, and have learned to pose as a Gaston, like the rest of them! But what I wanted particularly to tell you, and what it concerns you to know is, that the Gastons--Edward and Louis as well as the others--are greatly prejudiced against Southerners. That was one reason why I asked you here.”

“It may make matters very difficult for me,” said Margaret, smiling.

“Not in the least, my dear. You have only to be yourself, assuming nothing. I feel a delightful security in letting matters take their course. You will know perfectly what to do, and I think nothing could be more inspiring than forcing people to abandon foolish prejudices. I should not be sorry to have your chance myself.”

“Surely, the same opportunity must once have been yours.”

“Oh no, they won’t accord me that for a moment. They say, with truth, that merely to have been born in the South does not make me a Southerner, and that, having spent as much time in the North--and, for that matter, the East and West--as in the South, I must be set down as a cosmopolitan.”

“I am almost surprised to hear you say they are prejudiced,” said Margaret; “I should suppose they were too intelligent for that.”

“Just what I’ve always said. For my part, I haven’t an atom of prejudice in my composition. It is unworthy of enlightened human beings, and so I tell Edward and Louis.”

“And what do they say?”

“Oh, that they are not prejudiced, of course. Denial is the only answer such people can give. But, for all that, they are. I think Northern people, as a rule, are more prejudiced than Southerners.”

“They must go great lengths, if they are,” said Margaret; “but I am not speaking of the more enlightened ones, and I have always supposed that the existence of such feelings in Bassett was due to the fact that it is such a small place, and so shut off from contact with the world. And then, too, I think much of it is to be attributed to the fact that those poor people suffered so terribly by the war.”

“Exactly. I often tell Edward and Louis that they are so much less justifiable, because they were the victors. I’m sure _I_ feel it a very easy thing to be magnanimous toward a person I’ve got the better of. But I’ve long since ceased to apply arguments to a prejudice. Finding they did not answer, I thought a practical illustration might.”

A moment’s silence ensued, which Margaret presently broke by saying:

“Is Mr. Louis Gaston younger or older than your husband?”

“Younger, of course,--years younger. He’s not quite thirty.”

“Is he a bachelor or a widower?”

“A bachelor, of course. Fancy Louis being a widower! He stands on the high vantage-ground of lofty impregnability. He is not in love, and he would fain have it believed he never has been, or at least only in a careless and off-hand manner. Not that he avoids women. On the contrary, he goes into society, and enjoys it very much when he has time, which is not very often.”

“Do you mean that he works out of office hours?”

“He has no particular office hours, and he works at all times, early and late. His partner lives in New York and he is there a great deal, and there most of the work is done; but he is always drawing plans and making estimates here at home, and has a branch office down the street. Sometimes he works in his room, and sometimes I persuade him to bring his designs down into the library, when there seems a likelihood of our having a quiet evening. I pretend I’m interested in them, to please him,--he does a great deal to please me; but I’m not so, really.”

“They must be interesting to him, at any rate, to absorb him so completely.”

“I should think so! Why, I’ve known Louis, when there was a stress of work, to sit up the entire night, and then take a cold bath and come down to breakfast perfectly fresh, and be ready afterward to go off down town and be at it again until night. It’s enough to make one yawn to think of it.”

Mrs. Gaston, suiting the action to the word, was settling herself more comfortably among the pillows, and so failed to observe the look of eager interest her words had called up in her companion’s face. She had just arranged her position to her satisfaction, and turned to continue the conversation, when a quick step was heard ascending the staircase.

“That’s Louis’ step,” she said suddenly. “Close the door, please; he will probably stop to speak to me.”

Margaret obeyed in silence, and the next moment the footsteps stopped at the door, and a very pleasantly modulated voice said:

“Any admittance to a repentant renegade, who comes to make his peace?”

“No,” said Mrs. Gaston, quietly; “I’m not well--worse than usual, indeed--used up with recent exertions and in no mood to show clemency to offenders.”

“And pray, in what have the recent exertions consisted?” the voice replied.

“Oh, the usual round of wearing domestic affairs, with a new item added.”

“Ahem!” exclaimed the voice; “it would seem the young Southerner has arrived. Is it so?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Gaston, dryly, “she has.”

“If I were not too generous, I should say, ‘I told you so,’” went on the voice. “I have observed that Southern importations into Northern climates are usually attended with certain disadvantages.”

“Oh, she’s a very nice little thing,” said Mrs. Gaston, carelessly, “I think something can be made of her.”

“And you are to have the pleasure of conducting the process of development, and Edward and I that of looking on at it--is that it? Where is she, by-the-way? Is there any danger of one’s meeting her on the stairs, and having to account for one’s self? A civilized man, encountered unexpectedly, might unsteady the nerves of the Importation--might he not?”

“Possibly,” said Mrs. Gaston; “but there’s no danger. I’ve given her a room far away from yours; so you will still have the privilege of keeping unearthly hours without disturbing any one.”

“Thank you; that’s very considerate; but I must be off. I want to get some papers from my room, and then I must go to keep an appointment.”

“Of course! I shouldn’t know you if you hadn’t an appointment. It wouldn’t be you. Go on; but be prompt at dinner.”

“You may count upon me. And, by-the-way, you’ll let me know whenever you’d like me to do anything for your young friend’s entertainment. I shall not be likely to know the tastes and predilections of the Importation, but if you think of anything I can do, I am at your service.”

“Thank you; but I let her look after herself pretty much. I fancy there will be no occasion to call on you.”

She threw an amount of careless weariness into her voice as she said this, that contrasted strongly with the smile of unmixed amusement with which she turned her eyes on Margaret a moment afterward, as the footsteps outside were heard ascending the staircase.

“Well,” she said quietly, “that’s Louis. What do you think of him?”

“How can I possibly say?” said Margaret, divided between amusement and indignation.

“Surely you must have some impression of him,” Mrs. Gaston urged.

“He has a very pleasant voice.”

“You couldn’t fail to notice that. I was sure you would. New Englanders are somewhat maligned in the matter of voices, I think. That dreadful nasal twang, where it exists at all among the more cultivated, usually belongs to the women; though I must say Edward has some relations, male and female, who set my teeth on edge whenever they come near me. But a really beautiful voice, such as Louis’, is a rarity anywhere, and he pronounces his words so exquisitely! Only to hear him say ‘Matthew Arnold’ rests every bone in one’s body. I dare say you would have expected to hear the endless succession of double o’s, always attributed to _Noo_ Englanders!”

“Oh, no!” said Margaret. “I always supposed cultivated New Englanders quite superior to that.”

“They suppose themselves to be so, also,” said Cousin Eugenia; “but they are not in all cases, by any means. Edward himself had a decided tendency in that direction when I married him. I have often told him that what first suggested to me to accept him was a curiosity to see whether he would address me as ‘Oogenia,’ when he grew sentimental; and I protest he did!”

Margaret could not help laughing at this, but she soon became grave again, and said seriously:

“I am afraid I must be rather a _bête noir_ to Mr. Gaston.”

“It would seem so,” said Cousin Eugenia.

“I hope you will never call upon him to escort me anywhere, or do anything whatever for my entertainment,” Margaret continued. “I wish you would promise me not to.”

“With all my heart. I promise it as solemnly and bindingly as you like.”

At this point the footsteps were heard returning down the stairs, and again they paused outside.

“Can you come and take this?” the pleasant voice called softly.

“Open the door and hand it through a little crack,” Mrs. Gaston answered.

The knob was turned from without, and the door pushed open just wide enough to admit the entrance of a neatly done-up parcel, held in a large, finely formed hand.

Mrs. Gaston motioned to Margaret, who sat just behind the door, to take the parcel, and, not daring to protest, the girl moved forward and received it.

“Shake hands, in token of pardon for my slurs at the Importation,” the voice said, in a tone of quiet amusement, and Margaret, obeying another peremptory nod and glance from Mrs. Gaston, transferred the parcel to her left hand, and put her right one for a moment into that of Louis Gaston.

“I perceive that the toilet is indeed in its initial stages,” he said, “not a ring in place as yet! I hardly seem to know your hand in its present unfettered condition. I even think it seems slighter and colder than usual. The Importation must have taken a good deal out of you already.”

Not choosing to have her hand imprisoned longer in that firm and friendly clasp, Margaret forcibly withdrew it and stepped back, while Mrs. Gaston said, naturally:

“Cease your invidious remarks and go to your appointment, Louis. Thank you for the candy.”

The door was immediately closed from without, and again the footsteps retreated.

“I am glad you’ve shaken hands with Louis,” Mrs. Gaston said; “it’s an initiation to a friendship between you, and, in the end, you and Louis must be friends, though there will be certain inevitable obstructions at first. He is really the best and dearest creature that ever lived. He had a dreadful illness once from studying too hard for his college examinations, and Edward and I nursed him through it, and you don’t know how we did yearn over that boy! He’s been devoted to me ever since, one proof of which is, that he always brings me this candy from New York. Have some. I’m sure he ought to be good to me,” she said, critically peering into the box from which Margaret had just helped herself, and selecting a plump chocolate drop; “I certainly spoil him sufficiently. Still, there isn’t very much one can do for a man like that. He has such frugal habits, it’s quite baffling. But tell me what you think of him, after a second encounter.”

“Why, nothing more than I thought before, except that he has a beautiful hand.”

“Margaret, you are never disappointing,” said Cousin Eugenia, warmly. “I felt sure you would observe that. Go now and write the letters that you spoke of while I dress, and then we’ll go for a drive before lunch. And, by-the-way, while I think of it, put on your long black dress this evening, and wear the black lace at the throat and hands, as you had it the evening that the Kents were here. Don’t wear any color, not even a bit of gold. You know you gave me leave to make suggestions when you came, and it’s the first time I’ve used my privilege, though I think I am usually rather fond of suggesting. Ring for Lucy, please, and then hurry through your letters, that we may have a nice long drive.”

Chapter III.

A few minutes before six o’clock that evening, Margaret, clad in a long black gown that swathed her up to her milk-white throat, came slowly down the broad staircase of General Gaston’s house and entered the empty drawing-room.

Finding herself alone, she moved across the warm, bright room to the table which stood under the chandelier, and taking up the evening paper, which had just been brought in, she began rather listlessly to run her eyes along its columns. Presently some particular item caught her attention, and so absorbed her that she was unconscious of approaching footsteps, until she caught sight of a gentleman who was just entering the room from the hall.

Lowering the paper, she waited for him to come forward, which he did with a certain perplexity of expression and a slight confusion of manner. Seeing these indications, the girl looked into his face with frank self-possession, and said gently:

“Miss Trevennon.”

As there was no immediate response, she presently added:

“You are Mr. Gaston?”

The sound of his own name recalled him, and he came up and greeted her with a perfect ease that instantly put to flight the moment’s confusion; not however, before a watchful eye, applied to a crack between the folding-doors of the library, had noted the fact of its existence. These doors were now suddenly thrown apart, and Mrs. Gaston, dressed in a gay and ornate costume, entered the room.

“I beg pardon of you both for not having been on hand to introduce you,” she said, with careless composure, as she took her brother-in-law’s hand and turned her cheek to receive his light kiss. “You have managed to dispense with my offices, I’m glad to see! How are you, Louis?--though it is the merest form to ask. He is one of the hopelessly healthy people, Margaret, who are the most exasperating class on earth to me. Anything in the _Star_, dear? Let me see.”

She took the paper from Miss Trevennon’s hand, and began carelessly looking it over. Suddenly her eye lighted.

“Here’s something that may interest you, Louis,” she said, handing him the paper, as she pointed with her heavily jewelled finger to a paragraph headed:

“Southern Imports.”

At the same instant General Gaston entered the room, and just afterward a servant announced dinner.

Mrs. Gaston had mentioned that it was characteristic of her to be a magnanimous victor, and it may have been that fact which prompted her great urbanity to her brother-in-law on the present occasion. She ran her hand through his arm affectionately, as she walked toward the dining-room beside him, and thanked him with great effusiveness for the delicious candy. To all which he answered by the not very relevant response, uttered half under his breath:

“Never mind, madam! I’ll settle with you for this.”

Margaret, of course, was _vis-à-vis_ to Louis Gaston at the table, and while both joined in the general conversation which ensued, she perceived, by her quick glances, that he was a man of not more than medium height, with a straight and well-carried figure and a dark-skinned, intelligent face. He had dark eyes, which were at once keen and thoughtful, and very white teeth under his brown mustache. Although in undoubted possession of these good points, she did not set him down as a handsome man, though his natural advantages were enhanced by the fact that he was dressed with the most scrupulous neatness in every detail, the very cut of his short dark hair, parted straight in the middle, and brushed smoothly down on top of his noticeably fine head, and the well-kept appearance of his rather long finger-nails, giving evidence of the fact that his toilet was performed with punctilious care.

It was something very new, and at the same time very pleasant to Margaret, to observe these little points in a person whose first and strongest impression upon her had been that of genuine manliness. In Bassett, the young men allowed their hair to grow rather long and uneven; and when, for some great occasion, they would pay a visit to the barber, the shorn and cropped appearance they presented afterward was so transforming as to make it necessary for their friends to look twice to be sure of their identity. As to their nails, in many instances these were kept in check by means of certain implements provided by nature for purposes of ruthless demolition, and when this was not the case they were left to work their own destruction, or else hurriedly disposed of in the intervals of vehement stick-whittling. Not a man of them but would have set it down as effeminate to manifest the scrupulous care in dress which was observable in Louis Gaston, and it was upon this very point that Margaret was reflecting when Gaston’s voice recalled her.

“I’m uncommonly glad to get home, Eugenia,” he said, tasting his wine, as the servant was removing his soup-plate. “I think Ames is beginning to find out that this Washington office is a mere subterfuge of mine, and that the real obstacle to my settling down in New York is my fondness for the domestic circle. I really wish Edward could manage to get sent to Governor’s Island. I must confess I should prefer New York as a residence, if I could be accompanied by my household gods and my tribe. Shouldn’t you, Miss Trevennon?”

Margaret had been sitting quite silent for some time, and Gaston, observing this, purposely drew her into the conversation, a thing his sister-in-law would never have done, for the reason that she had observed that her young cousin possessed the not very common charm of listening and looking on with a perfect grace.

“I have never been to New York,” said Margaret, in answer to this direct appeal, “and I have only a limited idea of its advantages as a place of residence, though I don’t doubt they are very great.”

“They are, indeed,” said Louis, observing her with a furtive scrutiny across the graceful mass of bloom and leafage in the _épergne_. “You will like it immensely.”

“If I ever make its acquaintance,” said Margaret, smiling. “Washington seemed to me the border-land of the Antipodes before I came here, and I have never thought of going beyond it.”

“You have lived, then, altogether in the South?” said Gaston, with a tinge of incredulity in his voice, so faint as to escape Margaret, but perfectly evident to Mrs. Gaston, for the reason, perhaps, that she was listening for it.

“Yes, altogether,” Margaret answered.

“My poor little cousin is in a most benighted condition,” Mrs. Gaston said. “She has not only never been to New York, but--only think!--until to-day she never heard of Ames & Gaston!”

“Impossible! Unbelievable!” said Louis. “Was it for this that they designed ‘All Saints,’ and have even been mentioned in connection with the new skating-rink? Eugenia, you are a true friend. It will not be necessary for me to carry a slave about with me to remind me that I am a man, like the great monarch we read of in history; a sister-in-law is a capital substitute and performs her office quite as faithfully.”

“Perhaps it is well for me,” said Margaret, smiling demurely, “that I began my list of ignorances with such an imposing one; it will make those that follow seem trivial by comparison.”

“There is wisdom in what you say, Miss Trevennon,” said Louis; “and if you wish to impress yourself with the magnitude of the present one, get Eugenia to take you to see ‘All Saints.’”

The conversation now turned into other channels, and it was not until Margaret was saying good-night to Mrs. Gaston, in the latter’s dressing-room, that she reverted to this subject.

“I can well believe that Mr. Gaston is a clever architect,” she said, “his eye is so keen and steady. I should like to see some of his work. This ‘All Saints’ Church is very beautiful, I suppose. Shall we really go to see it some day?”

Mrs. Gaston broke into her little light laugh.

“That’s a piece of nonsense of Louis’, my dear,” she said. “It’s a cheap little mission chapel, built by a very poor congregation in a wretched part of the town. The Travers girls got Louis interested in it, and he made them the designs and estimates and superintends its erection. Of course he charged them nothing; in fact, I believe he subscribed a good deal toward it himself. He is amused at the idea of their calling it ‘All Saints,’ and making it such a comprehensive memorial. He and his partner have designed some really beautiful buildings here, however, which I will show you. Louis is very clever, don’t you think so?”

“I hardly feel able to judge, yet,” said Margaret, “but if you say so, I will believe it, for since I’ve been with you, Cousin Eugenia, I begin to think I never knew any one before who was clever.”

“Why are you always forcing one to remind you of your ignorance, child?” retorted Mrs. Gaston, laughing lightly. “This is the most convincing proof we have had of it yet.”

As Margaret went up to say good-night, she felt a strong impulse to express some of the ever-ready affection which her cousin’s kindness had awakened in her heart; but Cousin Eugenia was a woman to whom it was very hard to be affectionate, and she thwarted her young cousin’s intention now by turning her cheek so coolly that the ardent words died on the girl’s lips. Mrs. Gaston was naturally unsympathetic, and it almost seemed as if she cultivated the quality. However that might be, it was certain that, at the end of a month spent in daily companionship with this bright and agreeable cousin, Margaret was obliged to admit to herself that she had not taken one step toward the intimate friendship she would have liked to establish between them. Her cousin was kindness itself, and always companionable and agreeable, but she was scarcely ever really serious, although she had at hand a reserve of decorous gravity which she could always draw upon when occasion required.

Chapter IV.

“Eugenia,” said Louis Gaston, tapping at his sister-in-law’s door one morning, “I stopped to say that I will get tickets for Miss Trevennon and yourself for the opera Monday evening, if you say so.”

“_I_ don’t say so, my dear Louis, I assure you,” returned Mrs. Gaston opening her door and appearing before him in a tasteful morning toilet. “If you take Margaret and me to the opera, it must be for your own pleasure; she is not the kind of guest to hang heavily on her hostess’ hands. I’ve never been at a loss for her entertainment for a moment since she has been here, and what is more, scarcely ever for my own. I find myself quite equal to the task of providing for her amusement, and so it has not been difficult for me to keep my promise of not calling upon you in her behalf.”

“You certainly never made me any such promise as that, and it would have been very absurd if you had.”

“Ah, perhaps then it was to Margaret that I made it! The main point is that I’ve kept it.”

“Of course, Eugenia, it goes without saying, that when you have a young guest in the house my services are at your disposal.”

“Oh, certainly. Only, in this instance, I prefer to let all suggestions come from yourself. I know you only put up with my Southern relatives because of your regard for me, and, strong as is my faith in that sentiment, I don’t want to test it too severely; but I won’t detain you. Mrs. Gaston and Miss Trevennon accept with pleasure Mr. Gaston’s kind invitation for Monday evening. The opera is _Favorita_--isn’t it? Margaret has never heard it, I know; it will be very nice to initiate her. Will you be at home to dinner to-day?”

“Yes, of course,” replied the young man, looking back over his shoulder as he walked away.

“Oh, of course!” soliloquized his sister-in-law, as she turned back into her apartment. “Quite as if you were never known to do otherwise! Oh, the men! How facile they are! Louis, as well as the rest! I had expected something to come of this case of propinquity, but I did _not_ expect it to come so quickly. He hasn’t dined out more than twice since she’s been here, and then with visible reluctance, and he has only been once to New York, and I suspect the designs are suffering. And Margaret too! It’s quite the same with her--saying to me last night that his manners are so fine that she is constrained to admit that, taking Louis as an exponent of the Northern system, it must be better than the one she had always supposed to be the best! It works rapidly both ways, but there must be a hitch before long, for in reality they are as far asunder as the poles. Every tradition and every prejudice of each is diametrically opposed to the other. How _will_ it end, I wonder?”

It happened that Mrs. Gaston did an unusual amount of shopping and visiting that day, and was so fatigued in consequence that she had dinner served to her in her own apartment, and Margaret dined alone with the two gentlemen. Afterward she went up and spent an hour with the vivacious invalid, whom she found lying on the bed, surrounded by an array of paper novels by miscellaneous authors, the titles of which were of such a flashy and trashy order that Margaret felt sure she would never have cared to turn the first page of any of them, and wondered much that her intelligent and cultivated cousin could find the least interest in their contents. Mrs. Gaston was in the habit of ridiculing these novels herself, but would say, with a laugh, that they were “the greatest rest to her,” and Margaret was continually expecting to find her immersed in some abstruse work, which would sufficiently tax her mental powers to account for the liberal allowance of relaxation which was to counteract it; but, so far, she had been disappointed.

Mrs. Gaston laid her novel by on Margaret’s entrance, and gave her young cousin a cordial welcome. The two sat talking busily until General Gaston came up to his dressing-room to prepare for a lecture to which he was going, and to which he offered to take Margaret. His wife put her veto on that plan, however, pronouncing it a stupid affair, and saying that Margaret would be better entertained at home.

“But you are not to stay up here with me, my dear,” she said. “Go down stairs. Some one will be coming in by-and-by, I dare say, and you must not think of coming back to entertain me. I am bent on seeing how this absurd story ends; it’s the most deliciously preposterous thing I ever read,--so bad, that it’s good! Say good-night now, dear. I know you are never dull; so I dismiss you to your own devices. I don’t know where Louis is, but he may come and join you after a while. There’s never much counting on him, however.”

When Margaret descended to the drawing-room, the library doors were thrown apart, and through them she could see Louis Gaston bending over some large sheets of heavy paper, on which he was drawing lines by careful measurement. He looked up at the sound of her footsteps, and, as she took a magazine from the table, and seated herself in a large chair before the fire, he came in with his pencil in his hand, and leaning his back against the end of the mantel, said:

“Eugenia tells me you have never seen _Favorita_, and I so rejoiced to put an end to that state of affairs! You don’t know what an absolute refreshment it has been to me to observe your enjoyment of the music you have heard since you have been here. I don’t think I have ever received from any one such an impression of a true appreciation of music. It seems rather odd, as you neither play nor sing yourself.”

“It pleases me to think that my own incapacity does not interfere in the least with my enjoyment of music,” Margaret said. “When I hear beautiful music my pleasure in it is not impaired by any feeling of regret that I cannot produce such a thing myself. It no more occurs to me to long for that, than to long to create a beautiful sunset when I see one.”

“The fact that one is attainable, while the other is not, would make a difference, I think.” He paused a moment, and then went on with his pleasant smile: “Do you know this discovery of mine--that of your fastidious appreciation of music--has been the thing that deterred me from inflicting any of my own upon you? I was so set against this that I made Eugenia promise not to acquaint you with the fact that I can sing a little.”

“How could you do that?” exclaimed Margaret, reproachfully, with a keen conception of what lovely effects in singing might be produced by this richly modulated voice, whose spoken utterances she so admired. “I might have had such delight in hearing you sing! I am accustomed to having music so constantly at home. We have a friend there, a young man, who is almost like one of our own household, who sings beautifully. He has a lovely voice, so pure and strong, but entirely uncultivated. In some things it shows this almost painfully, but there are others that he renders exquisitely. Sacred music he sings best.”

“Ah, that I have never tried, at least not much. Your friend’s voice is the opposite of mine. I had really very little to begin with, and an immense deal of practice and training has not enabled me to do much more than direct properly the small amount of power I possess, and disguise its insufficiency more or less. It isn’t very much, after all, and yet how I have pegged away at my scales and exercises! I had a most exacting master when I was in Germany, and as I was studying my profession at the same time, I wore myself almost to a skeleton. I studied very hard at the School of Architecture, but I never practised less than three hours a day--often four.”

He was talking on, very lightly, but he stopped short, arrested by an expression on the face of his companion that he was at a loss to account for. There was a look of enthusiastic ardor in her eyes that amounted to positive emotion.

“How can you speak so lightly of a thing that was really so noble?” she said, in a voice full of feeling.

Louis’ face broke into a smile of sheerest astonishment, but at the same time he felt himself strangely stirred by the feeling that he had roused this warm admiration in the breast of this fair young lady.

“My dear Miss Trevennon,” he said earnestly, “you amaze me by applying such a word to my conduct. I went abroad to study architecture and music, and there was every reason why I should make the most of the three years I had allotted to these purposes. That I did my part with some degree of thoroughness was only what I felt bound to do, in the simplest justice to myself and others. When I think of the fellows who accomplished twice what I did, contending against such obstacles as poverty, or ill-health, or the absence of proper facilities, I find the word _noble_, as applied to myself, almost humiliating. Do you know, your views on some points are extremely puzzling to me?”

“I am at sea,” said Margaret gently, with a hesitating little smile. “Things that I see about me seem strange and unfamiliar, and I often feel that I have lost my bearings. But your resolute application to studies that must often have been wearying and laborious, to the exclusion of the relaxations most young men find necessary, rouses my profound admiration. I have never known a man who was capable of a thing like that.”

“Will you do me the kindness to tell me if I am blushing?” said Louis. “I veritably believe so, and as it is a thing I have never been known to do before, I should like to have the occurrence certified to. I venture to hope, however, that the fact is accounted for by my being physically thick skinned, and not morally so, for I have known myself to be blushing when the fact would not have been suspected by outsiders. Just now, however, I fancy it must have been evident to the most casual observer.”

He saw that the levity of his words and tones were, for some reason, discordant to Miss Trevennon, and so he spoke in a graver voice, as he said:

“I feel musical to-night, and almost as if I could overcome the hesitation I have spoken of sufficiently to sing you some of the music of _Favorita_ in anticipation of Monday night.”

“Oh, why don’t you? It would be so delightful!” exclaimed Margaret, fired at the suggestion.

“I never feel that I can sing well when I have to play my own accompaniments,” he said. “But for that----”

“Oh, if you have the music, do let me play for you!”

“Could you do it? I thought you did not play. Have you also been practising concealment?”

“My music amounts to nothing, but I could easily manage an accompaniment. Have you the notes?”

“Yes, just at hand. What a delightful idea! I never thought of this. You shouldn’t have cheated me out of such a pleasure all this time. Let me open the piano. Come!”

He tossed his pencil down upon the table, and moved across the room as he spoke. Seeing his action, Margaret checked herself as she was following, and said suddenly:

“I forgot your work. I really cannot interfere with that.”

“Never mind the work. The work may go. I’ll make it up somehow. Could you manage this, do you think?”

By way of answer, Margaret seated herself and ran over the prelude with tolerable ease, and at the proper time nodded to him to begin.

There was no interruption until the really impressive voice had died away in the last note, and then Margaret dropped her hands on her lap and said, with a long-drawn breath:

“I can see no lack. It is most beautiful. I think you must have greatly under-estimated your voice. It has a quality that touches me deeply.”

“What there is of it does pretty well,” Louis answered, smiling, well pleased at her earnest commendation. “Ames says I’m the best singer to have no voice that he ever heard, which is the greatest amount of praise I can lay claim to.”

“I feel more than ever, now, the lack of cultivation in Mr. Somers’ voice,” said Margaret. “It is really a grand organ, but he scarcely knows how to sing anything with entire correctness, unless it is something in which he has been carefully drilled by some one who knows a little more than himself. I wish he could hear you sing.”

“I wish I could hear him,” said Louis. “If he has the voice, the cultivation can be acquired readily enough; but with me the utmost has been done. Much of this music is rather beyond me. Let us try a ballad.”

He was bending over the rack, in search of some particular piece, when the door-bell sounded. They both heard it, and their eyes met with a look of disappointment.

“It’s too bad,” said Margaret, regretfully. “I don’t want to be interrupted.”

“In that case,” said Louis, promptly, arresting the servant on his way to the door by a quick motion of the hand, “suppose you allow me to have the ladies excused.”

Margaret assented readily, and the order was accordingly given.

A moment later the servant came into the room, presenting two cards on a tray. Gaston glanced at them, and Margaret saw his face change slightly.

“I am afraid Eugenia will make me suffer for this,” he said. “One of these visitors was young Leary.”

“Who is he?” asked Margaret, simply.

“You surely know who the Learys are?” Gaston replied, in a tone of reproachful incredulity that was almost severe. “They come of one of the most distinguished families at the North, and are here for the winter. The father of this young man has held various important diplomatic and political offices. They visit very little, and Eugenia will be annoyed that young Leary has not been admitted. I don’t think he has ever called here before, except to acknowledge an invitation. He sat near us at the theatre the other night, and I saw that he observed you; so this visit is probably a tribute to you.”

“I don’t know that you have said anything about him to make me regret him especially,” said Margaret, “only that he’s Mr. Leary; and what’s in a name? Is there any reason why one should particularly desire him as an acquaintance?”

Mr. Gaston looked slightly bewildered. Then he began to speak, and checked himself suddenly. Then, turning back to the piano, and beginning to look over the music, he said, somewhat hurriedly:

“It is only that they are people it’s well to be civil to.”

There was something in the tone Louis took, in regard to this matter, that puzzled Margaret--a tone that had also puzzled her in the other members of the Gaston family. There seemed to be a certain anxiety with all of them to know the right people, and be seen at the proper houses, and have only the best people at their own. Margaret Trevennon, for her part, had never had a qualm of this sort in her life, and supposed, moreover, that only vulgar or uncertainly posed people could possibly be subject to them. And yet here were people who were not only not vulgar but more elegant and charming than any men and women she had ever known, who were entitled to, and actually held, an unimpeachable social position, and who yet seemed to find it necessary to struggle hard to maintain it, and were continually possessed by a positive anxiety to appear to be distinguished! Really, it seemed their first and principal concern. This was the first time she had seen a decided indication of the feeling in Louis Gaston, and somehow it hurt her more in him than in the others. Unconsciously she gave a little sigh.

“Dear me!” she thought to herself, “what an unpleasant idea! Why need people assume anything, when they actually have it all? It never occurred to me that really nice people could give themselves any concern of this sort.”

And then, as she turned and suddenly met Louis’ eyes, her face broke into a smile of sudden amusement.

“What is it?” said the young man, eagerly.

“I was laughing at some lines from the ‘Bab Ballads’ that happened to come into my head just then,” she said.

“What were they? I dote upon the Babs. Do let’s have them.”

“Lord Lardy would smile and observe, ‘How strange are the customs of France!’”

quoted Margaret. “I dare say they don’t seem very relevant. But come, let’s go on with the music,” she added, hurriedly. “We must not prolong the interruption.”

Mr. Gaston had smiled at her quotation and then become suddenly grave. As he selected a sheet of music and put it on the rack before her, he said seriously:

“I sometimes see that there are little points that we look at very differently. Perhaps we may come to understand each other by-and-by. I hope so, sincerely. And now, are you familiar with this, and do you care for it?”

The selection happened to be a favorite of Margaret’s, and she entered delightedly into its rendition, and very soon the lovely strains of the sweet, sympathetic voice had banished all discordant thoughts and memories.

“There, Miss Trevennon,” he said, as the song came to an end, “you’ve heard me do my little best now. Your accompaniments suit me perfectly. I am sure I never sang better. I hope we may have many another pleasant evening, such as this, together.”

Margaret had risen from the piano and was standing before the fire, and she watched him with mingled interest and surprise, as he neatly replaced the music in the rack, lowered the instrument, and carefully arranged the cover, with a habit of orderliness of which she had also seen indications in General Gaston. It was to her almost a new trait, in men.

“Cousin Eugenia insists upon early hours, now that I am not going out,” said Margaret, “so, as it is half-past ten, I will say good-night. I feel rather guilty,” she added, pausing in the door-way, “for interrupting your work to-night. I dare say you wanted to finish it.”

“Oh, as to that, it isn’t a matter of choice,” he murmured; “Ames must have those estimates to-morrow, and they are bound to go on the morning train.”

“And when are they to be done?”

“Now, at once. I can easily finish them off to-night,” he replied carelessly. “Pray don’t look as if you had committed a mortal sin, Miss Trevennon,” he added, smiling. “I assure you I don’t weigh this little nocturnal application as dust in the balance against the pleasure I’ve had in this musical evening with you. I hope it is not on my account you are hurrying off. I assure you there is abundance of time for my purposes. I shall take these papers to my room and finish them.”

But Margaret, bent upon not hindering him further, retired at once.

The next morning Mrs. Gaston asked her brother-in-law at breakfast, whether he had not passed her room about sunrise, and, with some confusion, he was compelled to own that he had.

“What provoking ears you have, Eugenia!” he said; “I flattered myself that a mouse could not have been more noiseless. I am sorry to have disturbed you, especially as you had not been feeling well.”

“Oh, I was awake, at any rate. But what was the occasion of your early expedition?” she asked, without showing any especial surprise.

“I had to post some papers to Ames,” he said; “and though I had told Thomas I would ring for him to take them, the morning was so bright and clear that I fancied I should like the walk. And really it was most refreshing.”

“I can fancy you needed refreshment,” Mrs. Gaston said, “if, as I don’t doubt, you had been at work all night.”

Mr. Gaston made no response. He was helping himself from a dish offered by a servant at the moment, and seemed disposed to let the matter drop; but Margaret, urged by an irresistible impulse, arrested his eye and said quickly:

“Had you?”

“Had I what, Miss Trevennon?”

“Had you been at work all night?”

“Pretty much, I believe; but why do you look so tragic? I am not in delicate health, that the lack of a little sleep should entail serious consequences.”

“‘Pleasure the way you like it’!” said Mrs. Gaston. “Louis really likes that sort of thing; he deserves no credit for it. I used to apprehend that I should find myself brother-in-law-less very shortly in consequence of those habits, but he thrives on them; he’s the healthiest person I know. Don’t waste your sympathy on him, Margaret; keep it all for me. It isn’t those who endure hardships, but those who can’t endure them that should be pitied.”

Chapter V.

The season was now fairly opened, and Mrs. Gaston kept her young guest liberally supplied with amusement. There were all sorts of entertainments for them to go to, some of which Margaret found very inspiring and delightful, and some extremely dull. Cousin Eugenia, however, found nothing unprofitable. Every visit and every entertainment served some purpose, in her abstruse economy, and, if she failed to derive actual diversion from any, it still fulfilled some end, and in some manner was turned to account.

She would take Margaret with her on the endless round of afternoon calls that she made, never doubting that she was conferring an immense favor on her young country cousin, until the latter begged to be excused from some of them, confessing that they wearied her. This was a great surprise to Cousin Eugenia, who cherished the honest conviction that every opportunity of catching a glimpse of the great world of fashion must perforce be esteemed a high privilege and delight by this little Southern cousin, whom she pitied profoundly for her necessary isolation from such sources of happiness. Margaret was perfectly aware of this, and secretly much amused at it. That Cousin Eugenia, or any one, should commiserate her upon her lot in life was something very strange to her, for she had always known herself to be a very happy and fortunate girl.

“The Kellers give such stupid parties!” said Cousin Eugenia one evening, as she and Margaret were returning from a large entertainment. “I haven’t missed one of them for the past five years, and they are asphyxiating affairs. I’m glad this one is well over.”

“Why do you go to them, then?”

“Oh, every one does. At least every one who can. You saw how full the rooms were this evening, and yet every one there was bored.”

“I was, undoubtedly,” said Margaret, “and for that reason I should certainly not go again.”

“You can afford to be independent, my dear, being here only on a visit, but if you lived in Washington you’d soon find that it was desirable for you to be seen at the Kellers’.”

“Why?”

“Oh, because of their position.”

Margaret was silent a moment, and then she said impulsively:

“Do excuse my asking such a thing, Cousin Eugenia, but I really want to understand. Could it possibly enhance your social value to be seen anywhere?”

Cousin Eugenia gave a little shrug.

“You put things so oddly, child, with your Southern notions! Of course our social position is fixed and definite and nobody would dispute it. But, large as the Kellers’ circle is, their parties are very _recherché_, and it’s well worth while to be seen there.”

“I thought----” began Margaret.

“Well, go on,” said her cousin, as the girl hesitated. “Out with it. Let me hear.”

“I was only going to say that I thought a lady, born and reared, never had to think of anything like that.”

“Like what?”

“Where she is seen and whether her associations will be considered correct. I thought that it would all come of itself--that a lady would not be in danger of making mistakes of that sort, because what she did would be the natural outgrowth of what she was.”

“Those may be the Southern ideas, but you’d not find them to answer here.”

“I don’t know whether they are Southern ideas or not,” said Margaret; “I never knew they were ideas at all. Certainly, I have never heard them formulated before, and I don’t quite know how to express myself. They simply seem to me instincts.”

“That’s because of the associations you have had,” said Mrs. Gaston. “I have seen very little of your parents of late years, but they have lived in my mind as people of thorough refinement. Your father is a model of a gentleman--the most high-bred man I ever knew, I think.”

A radiant light came into Margaret’s face.

“My darling, dear old father!” she said, fondly. “There is surely no one like him, and yet if I were to repeat your compliment to him, how amazed he would be! He has not an idea how fine he is, and has never once paused to consider whether he is high-bred or not. He would not hurt the feelings of the lowest wretch on earth--there is no one too mean for his kindly consideration. May I tell you an idea that has occurred to me, when I’ve been in society here, surrounded by such well-dressed, elegant looking, accomplished men, and have compared them to him? It is that they are all trying to be what he is.”

Mrs. Gaston did not reply at once, but her silence proceeded from no feeling of intolerance of this sentiment. She was not at all given to resenting things, partly because of a natural indolence, and partly because she did not feel enough on any subject to be biassed by impulse.

“I can understand your having that feeling about your father,” she said, presently, “and it’s quite possible it may be true. We will submit the point when we find any one wise enough to decide it for us. But the world is large, and there are many men and many minds, and manners vary in different places. That line of tactics would not do in Washington.”

At this point in their conversation they found themselves at home, and the subject was consequently dropped.

It happened about this time that some of Mrs. Gaston’s wide circle of Southern connections, who were always cropping up in Washington, came to the city, and Cousin Eugenia took Margaret and went to call upon--or, as she did not hesitate to put it, to inspect them. They were a General and Mrs. Reardon, the former an ex-Confederate officer, who had been previously in the United States army, and who was distantly related to both Mrs. Gaston and Margaret, though neither of them had anything more than a slight acquaintance with him.

Margaret soon perceived that Cousin Eugenia did not consider them up to the mark socially--a fact which was further evidenced by their being invited to lunch, and not to dinner, next day. No one was asked to meet them, and Mrs. Gaston excused the gentlemen on the score of business hours. Margaret noted the whole proceeding, and saw through it and beyond it. Cousin Eugenia was perfectly polite and pleasant--extremely sweet, in fact--and yet there was something in her manner toward these simple Southern people, of a type so familiar to Margaret Trevennon, that the girl involuntarily resented. She showed none of this feeling to Mrs. Gaston, however, for she was beginning to understand that, although that clever lady in matters of abstract theory appeared to be most reasonable and open to conviction, she was adamant itself in carrying out her peculiar designs and purposes, and quite unused to interference from any one.

The Reardons came next day, according to appointment, and the little luncheon-party passed off very pleasantly, greatly owing to Margaret’s efforts to make it do so.

When the guests were taking leave, they asked if Mrs. Gaston and Margaret would not go with them to an Art Exhibition in the evening. The proposal came, in a subdued and deprecating sort of way, from Mrs. Reardon, who was still young and pretty enough to be somewhat eager for pleasure, and although Mrs. Gaston declined it for herself, on the score of indisposition, she encouraged Margaret to go, and the latter very willingly agreed to do so.

She went accordingly, and was pretty well entertained with what she saw, recognizing some acquaintances, among whom was young Mr. Leary, who had been sufficiently persevering to call again, with better success next time, and who had always been especially polite to Margaret on meeting her in society. Shortly before leaving, an acquaintance of General Reardon’s came up, to whom Margaret was presented. He was a Major King, a Southern man, as Margaret somehow divined at a glance, and a resident of Washington, as it soon appeared. Before the party separated, he inquired where Miss Trevennon was staying, and asked her permission to call upon her. Margaret yielded the permission, of course, but with a strange feeling of reluctance; she saw that, though a familiar type of Southern man, he was not a favorable one. There was a sort of aggressive self-confidence in his bearing, which was unpleasant enough to her, but which she knew would be positively offensive to the prejudiced minds of the Gastons. He belonged to a class she knew well--men whose range of vision had been limited, but who were possessed of a feeling of superiority to others in general, and an absolute conviction of superiority to the best Yankee that ever lived. It was an attitude of mind that had always irritated her, but she had never felt the force of it with such indignation as now, when she was being hourly impressed with the worth and superior qualities of these people whom her Southern compatriots regarded with such scorn. If Major King should come to call, however, she could feel confident that he would not betray the presence of this vindictive feeling, for, despite her disapproval of his tone and manner in general, she felt that she could count upon his possessing a spirit of courtesy, a hidden germ of which she had rarely found wanting in a Southern man’s breast.

Margaret mentioned, at breakfast next morning, the fact of her having met Major King, and inquired of her friends if they knew him. The two gentlemen were silent, and Mrs. Gaston replied by a simple negative. She had intended to mention the fact that he had proposed to call upon her, but some instinct prevented her doing so. Very probably he would not come; and, besides, she had an indefinable feeling that there was danger in the topic.

It had become a habit with Margaret to go from the breakfast-table to the bow-window, on the corner of the house, to watch for the coming of the postman, and recently Mr. Gaston had fallen into the way of accompanying her. As the two young people found themselves together in the richly curtained recess, Margaret turned to her companion, with a smile, and said:

“Mr. Leary was there last night. He talked to me for quite half an hour. Ought I to have been elated?”

“Certainly not,” replied the young man, frowning slightly. “Why do you ask such a thing? The idea is quite absurd.”

“Yes, isn’t it?” said Margaret, smiling. “He has so little sense, and he talks so much about himself. Here comes the postman!” She broke off suddenly, running to open the door herself, never divining that it would have been considered more decorous to wait until Thomas came up from the lower regions, and, with his usual deliberation, brought in the letters on his silver tray.

Chapter VI.

It happened one evening, a few days later on, that Margaret found herself once more _tête-à-tête_ with Louis Gaston. General and Mrs. Gaston had gone to a dinner, from which Margaret was not sorry to be excused.

It was a cold and rainy evening in December, and the drawing-room, with its rich drapery and soft, deep Persian carpeting, was delightfully comfortable and warm, the wind, as it whistled and blustered outside, adding to this effect. The bright lights which hung from the ceiling, together with the glowing fire in the grate, shed a perfect wealth of warmth and radiance around, and brought out the delicious fragrance of the fresh flowers, which filled a china bowl on a distant table. Louis, as on the former occasion, bent over the table, just within the library door, with his back toward the drawing-room, and Margaret, as before, sat in the deep arm-chair before the fire.

“This is the lucky chance that I’ve been waiting for,” said Gaston, turning to look at Margaret, as she settled herself with her book. “It is such a bad evening that I think we may hope for an immunity from visitors, and in a few minutes I shall lay by my work and come and try some new music I’ve provided, if you agree.”

“I shall be charmed,” said Margaret, with ready acquiescence. “I feel just in the humor for it. I utterly repel the proposition, however, if you are going to sit up all night in consequence.”

“I will not, I assure you. It is not necessary, in the least. I’ll just finish off a small bit that I am engaged on at present, and then put the rest by until to-morrow.”

He returned to his work, and Margaret to her reading, and for a few moments the silence was unbroken, save by the sound of the wind and rain outside, and the soft little noises made by Louis with his pencil and rule.

Suddenly the door-bell rang, and, as before, they looked at each other regretfully. Louis was about to make the same proposition that his companion had responded to so promptly on the former occasion, but a look at Margaret’s face checked him. An instinct which she scarcely understood herself, made it impossible for her to do a thing like that now. The fact that she was conscious of feeling a strong liking for Louis, restrained her from giving such a proof of it as this would be.

“I am sorry to give up the music,” she said simply, as Thomas went by to the door, unchallenged. “There is still room to hope that it is a call that will not concern us.”

For a moment this seemed likely, as there was a short colloquy with Thomas at the door before the visitor was admitted, and even after that he lingered to remove his overcoat and rubbers in the hall, with a deliberation that implied a degree of familiarity that Margaret could not identify as belonging to any visitor at the house whom she had yet met.

The next moment, as Louis Gaston and herself were both watching the door-way, Major King appeared, tall, gaunt, and awkward, but eminently self-possessed.

His loosely hung, impractically tall figure was clad in the inevitable shiny black “best clothes,” that poor Margaret knew so well, even to the cut of the long frock-coat, with its flapping tails behind and its bagging, unhindered fronts, between which was displayed, through a premeditated opening in the vest, a modicum of white shirt-front, interrupted for an inch or so by the fastening of the upper buttons, only to reveal itself in more generous expansiveness higher up upon the Major’s manly bosom.

Margaret’s quick eye at once perceived the incongruity of the whole situation, and warned her of the necessity of effort on the part of all to reconcile and overcome it. She went forward and received Major King with the perfect politeness which was as natural to her as breathing, and then turned to present Mr. Gaston, who, with the folding-doors of the library opened wide, was quite as if he were in the same room.

Gaston’s aspect, at the first glance she gave him, was absolutely startling to her. His whole bearing had changed. He had risen from his seat and turned toward the drawing-room, and was standing by the table, very erect and still. The expression of his face was repellant to the last degree, the brows were contracted in a slight but perceptible frown, and the lips were shut with a firm severity.

Margaret, as she mechanically named the two men to each other, could not help drawing a swift mental contrast between the gaunt Southerner, whose features were, in reality, the handsomer of the two, and the Northern man, in his quiet evening dress, and wondering why the latter looked so greatly the superior. Mr. Gaston’s attitude, despite its stiffness, was dignified and impressive, and Major King’s, notwithstanding its ease, was slouching and ungainly.

But the most significant point of contrast came when each man, after his kind, acknowledged the introduction.

“Glad to meet you, sir,” said Major King, in loud, reverberating tones, and made a motion forward, as if to extend his hand. This impulse was repressed, however, by the short, supercilious bow with which the other responded, pronouncing the two words, “Good-evening,” with a chilling and clear-cut utterance that formed the strongest possible contrast to the stranger’s bluff and off-hand style of address. Margaret observed that he did not pronounce Major King’s name at all.

The young girl watched this interchange of greetings with a rush of conflicting emotions. Indignation, shame, astonishment and real pain fought for the predominance; but above all, she was conscious of an instinct which made her feel that the Southern man’s side was her side.

Mr. Gaston, as soon as the introduction was over, resumed his seat at the library-table, and went on with his work, turning his back squarely toward the drawing-room, an action which made it impossible for Major King to fail to realize that he was being intentionally and deliberately slighted. How galling this knowledge must be to a Southern man Margaret well knew, and she felt all her sympathies enlisted for Major King. With the keenest anxiety she watched to see what his course would be.

With a slight flushing of the cheek and a dark flashing of the eye, the tall Southerner seated himself in a delicate little gilt chair, which he proceeded to tip backward, until his heavy weight caused the slight wood-work to creak ominously. Then, in response to a brilliant leader respecting the weather, thrown out by poor Margaret in her extremity, he launched into a fluent and somewhat irrelevant strain of conversation, which soon made it evident that he could go alone. His voice, alas! was loud and self-asserting, and his whole manner so arrogant and ill-bred that Margaret felt her spirit of partisanship growing fainter and fainter. One thing alone was clear to her, and that was her own course. She heard Major King with polite attention, and answered his remarks, when his fluency would permit, with entire courtesy. But Margaret was on the rack the whole time as he talked on, loud, familiar, and irritating. Louis Gaston, seated just within the library door, heard every word--as indeed he must have been deaf not to do--and Margaret fancied she could detect an expression of angry superciliousness in the very attitude of the well-set shoulders and the inclination of the close-cropped head.

The minutes came and went, until they mounted up to hours, and still Major King sat and talked and laughed and told jokes with a ghastly hilarity, which his companion found it frightfully hard to respond to. Nine o’clock struck--ten, eleven, and still he did not go! It could not be that he was enjoying himself, for the poor girl felt that he was secretly as uncomfortable as herself, and, besides, he could never have had a less entertaining companion. She forced herself to attend, while he was giving an account of a play he had seen the night before, which must have been lame and impotent enough in the first instance, but which in the rehash was intolerable. She even tried to laugh when he came to the amusing parts, which he always indicated by laughing loudly himself. But it was torture to her.

All things have an end, however, an indisputable proposition with which Margaret had buoyed herself up repeatedly during this trying visit, and at last Major King rose to go. He was not going to be browbeaten into a hasty retreat, however. Not he! He would take his time about it, and by way of a parting assertion of ease, he took up a handsome book from the table, and after reading the title aloud, with a jocular air and a somewhat defective pronunciation, he tossed it down so carelessly that the beautiful _edition de luxe_ fell to the floor, with its delicate leaves crushed open beneath its heavy cover. He made no effort to recover it, until he saw Margaret stooping to do so, when he hastily picked it up, and flung rather than placed it on the table. When Margaret had shaken hands with him, and said good-night, with no tinge of abatement of the courtesy which had characterized her conduct throughout, she looked toward the library and saw that Mr. Gaston had risen and turned toward them, bowing to Major King with exactly the same motion and expression as that with which he had acknowledged their introduction. There was one difference, however. The little frigid bow was given in perfect silence, and not one word of farewell was spoken. Major King responded by a short, defiant nod, and a flashing glance which might have surprised the other, had he allowed his gaze to rest upon the visitor’s face long enough to perceive it.

There was a necessary delay in the hall over the rubbers and overcoat, which it seemed to Margaret that he put on with elaborate slowness, and then, at last, the front door closed behind Major King with a loud, contemptuous bang.

The ordeal was over, but it left poor Margaret with a heavy heart; she felt disgusted with everything and everybody.

“There’s not a pin to choose between them,” she was saying to herself, “only Mr. Gaston was the host, and Mr. Gaston is the more enlightened man, and therefore more bound to know better.”

She was too angry to look at Louis, and was leaving the room with a quiet “good-night,” when the young man arrested her by saying, in a tone of undisguised indignation:

“Twenty minutes past eleven o’clock; and a first visit too! This is intolerable!”

Margaret looked straight into his eyes, with a steady glance of scorn, that she made no effort to disguise.

“I dare say Major King was unaware of the lateness of the hour,” she said, in a cool, high tone. “Good-night, Mr. Gaston.”

And she walked quietly out of the room, and mounted the stairs to her own apartment, angrier than she had been yet.

She closed the door behind her, turned the gas on full, and stretched herself out at her whole length on the lounge, clasping her hands under her head. Her thoughts were too confused to be formulated, but the one that predominated over all the rest was that she could never like Louis Gaston again. She had the feeling that would have made her wish to fight him had she been a man.

Major King’s conduct had been in the highest degree reprehensible, but he had been led on to it by the slights the other offered him. And then, too, she had a keen perception of what Major King’s opportunities had probably been. He belonged to the class of impoverished Southerners who had lost everything by the war, and had probably spent most of the years of his manhood in a small village, living in a style that formed a strong contrast to the affluence of his youth. His bearing, during this trying evening, she attributed much to ignorance and much to the stinging sense of failure and defeat, which the war had left on so many Southern men. Added to all this, there must have been a keen indignation at the unjustness and insolence with which he was treated by a man from whom he had a right to expect common civility at least.

But with Louis Gaston it was different. He could not plead the excuse of isolation and ignorance. He was a cultivated man of the world, who had all the advantages of education, travel, and wealth; and, more than all, his offence was heinous, in a Southern mind, because it had been committed against the stranger within the gates.

“Nothing can ever wipe it out,” she muttered to herself; “the longer one thinks of it the worse it grows. There are half-a-dozen palliations for Major King, but for Mr. Gaston there is not one. I am certain that Major King, in spite of it all, would have been incapable of treating his worst enemy so. What a mortifying, humiliating experience!”

And, with a gesture of disgust, Miss Trevennon rose and walked to the dressing-table, beginning slowly to unfasten her little ornaments, in preparation for the night’s rest, which, in her perturbed state of mind, was very long in coming to her.

Louis Gaston, meanwhile, left to his own reflections, grew conscious of the fact that he was feeling very uncomfortable. The sensation was not by any means a new one. He had harbored it, uninterruptedly, for the past three hours, but it had undergone a change in kind and degree. He was relieved from the intolerable infliction of Major King’s presence, but unrest in another form had entered his breast; and though its nature was less tangible and aggressive, it somehow seemed to strike deeper.

He could not be blind to the fact that he had offended Margaret, whose conduct during the evening had really puzzled him as much as his had puzzled her. How could she bear to be pleasant and civil to a man like that? It made him angry to think of the fellow’s daring even to speak to her, and he assured himself that he had been perfectly right to pursue a course which would free her from such an obnoxious intrusion in future. And yet, under it all, there was a glimmering, disturbing little consciousness that he had somehow been in the wrong. It was the first time in his life that he had had occasion to distrust his social methods, and he would not quite own to such a state of mind now. There was, moreover, another feeling at work within his breast, which caused him to determine that he would make some concessions, if necessary, to reinstate himself in this young lady’s regard. It was a thing which he knew he had heretofore enjoyed, and he felt a strong reluctance to giving it up.

Neither were Louis Gaston’s slumbers as serene and tranquil as usual that night. He made some effort to return to his work, but he found it impossible to fix his attention on it, and so retired to bed to wait for the sleep that was so strangely long in coming.

Chapter VII.

When Miss Trevennon appeared at breakfast, the morning after Major King’s visit, Mr. Gaston greeted her with more than his usual cordiality, and for the first time addressed her as “Miss Margaret.”

The young lady replied to his morning salutation with a composed civility, and gave no sign of having observed the distinguished familiarity with which she was treated. She was quite her usual self during the meal, but she said little to Louis Gaston, and he observed that she did not voluntarily look at him. By the time that breakfast was ended she had managed, without awakening the least suspicion on the part of the others, to convey to Louis Gaston the conviction that she was set like steel against him.

It was at the same time depressing and inspiring to the young man to perceive this. He was sorry to have this charming girl angry with him, and yet he could well imagine how pleasant a reconciliation with her would be. He was certainly not a coxcomb, but he was accustomed to good-humored handling by women, and he had no misgivings as to his ability to adjust the present little difficulty to his entire satisfaction. Meantime, there she sat opposite, looking very charming, with her air of dainty reserve. The impertinent little ignoramus, to pretend to set _him_ right! He smiled to himself at the absurdity of the thought. The situation seemed to him extremely piquant.

He had already settled upon the remark with which he would open the conversation, when he should presently follow her into the bow-window as usual, and he was therefore a little disconcerted when Miss Trevennon passed out of the dining-room by the door that opened into the hall, and mounted the stairs to her own room, whence she did not emerge until Louis, after long waiting, had gone off down town.

Later in the day, when Margaret found herself alone with Mrs. Gaston, she had some thought of informing the latter of last night’s occurrences, but upon reflection this appeared so difficult that she gave it up. It was doubtful if any good purpose could be served thereby, and besides it would be very hard to describe her own feelings with sufficient reserve to avoid the rudeness of speaking unwarrantably to Mrs. Gaston of the brother-in-law who was such a favorite with her. Apart from all this, though there had been no opportunity for the positive manifestation of the feeling, it was borne in upon her that Mrs. Gaston herself would be found ranged on Louis’ side. So she said nothing about the matter and listened to Cousin Eugenia’s plans for the day just as usual.

There was another dinner on hand for this evening, and Mrs. Gaston expressed her intention of going out to recuperate her energies by a drive before luncheon, and Margaret presently left her, agreeing to join her, ready for the expedition, at twelve. In the hall she met a servant with some letters, one of which proved to be from her mother. This letter, filled with all manner of little, familiar domestic details, was read and re-read by Margaret with a degree of feeling quite inconsistent with the nature of its contents. The quiet home-pictures presented such a contrast to the annoyances recently encountered, that for a while she heartily wished herself back at Bassett.

There was but one item of especial importance in the letter, and that was the announcement of the sudden return from Europe of Mrs. Trevennon’s nephew, Alan Decourcy, an individual who had long reigned in Margaret’s mind and memory as a veritable Prince Charming, who possessed to the letter every endowment of nature and advantage of fortune which the most exacting of maidens could have asked. Margaret had not seen him since he had come to man’s estate, but, as a boy, he had spent much of each year at a country home near Bassett, owned by his mother, and she had always looked upon him as the most fortunate and gifted of beings. He was an only son, and his sister, who was some years older than himself, was now married and living in Baltimore. To this sister Margaret had pledged herself for a visit before returning to the South. How pleasant it would be to meet Alan there! His mother was now dead, and after finishing his course at a Northern university he had gone abroad for a year’s travel, but it was only at the end of four years that he had now returned. She wondered if he would prove to be as handsome and charming as memory painted him! His occasional letters had been very delightful, and led her to believe that all the bright promises of his youth had been fulfilled. And now he had actually returned, and she was to see him! Mrs. Trevennon wrote that she had already sent him her daughter’s address in Washington, saying that he must run over from Baltimore and see her. She added that her nephew had said that he would probably linger a while in New York before joining his sister, and so his movements were rather indefinite.

The feelings which this announcement of Alan Decourcy’s return awakened were contradictory. Margaret was naturally very anxious to see this charming cousin, but she did not want him to come to see her in this house; she hoped she might never have another visitor here. Alan Decourcy was sure to be all that was elegant and charming, but since one person who had come to this house to see her had been treated with such discourtesy she wished for no more visitors. Already she had begun to lay plans for the termination of her visit, and she now resolved to speak to Cousin Eugenia, on the subject of going to Baltimore, as soon as the opportunity should offer.

“I wish I had Alan’s New York address,” she said to herself; “I’d write and tell him I would go to Baltimore, and so prevent his coming here. What _would_ papa and mamma think if they knew I was staying at a house where I could not ask my cousin to call upon me, because I had no assurance that my visitors would not be treated rudely? They would not believe it. They simply could not understand it. My dear old father! He would take my letter to the light and read it over with his spectacles on, to see if there was not some mistake in his understanding of it. Once convinced, however, I know well enough what his course would be. He would write me to come away at once.” And Margaret rose to prepare for her drive with eyes that had grown moist at these recollections of her far-off home.

By the time that Cousin Eugenia sent to summon her, however, Miss Trevennon had recovered her composure, and when, a little later, seated by her cousin’s side, she was bowling swiftly over the smooth, hard pavements, the exhilaration of the exercise had roused her spirits to such buoyancy that small annoyances, past and future, seemed trivial enough to be ignored.

Chapter VIII.

Having assisted, humbly and admiringly, at Mrs. Gaston’s elaborate dinner-toilet that evening, Margaret followed the gracefully cloaked and hooded figure down the stairs and out to the door-steps, when she said a gay good-bye to her cousin and General Gaston, and turned and entered the house. She had been informed that Louis Gaston also had an engagement, and so she had the not unwelcome prospect of a quiet evening to herself. There were some things that she wanted leisure to think out, calmly and deliberately, and as the drawing-room looked very warm and inviting she turned toward it, and had sunk into her favorite chair before the fire, when she perceived, for the first time, that the library doors were thrown open and that Louis Gaston was sitting there at work. The sight was an irritating one. His very attitude and the set of his firm, strong shoulders, recalled vividly her discomfiture of the previous evening, and roused all the quick indignation she had felt then. She was about to withdraw at once, in the hope that he might not have perceived her entrance, when he turned suddenly, and, seeing her, rose and came forward, his face wearing its pleasantest smile, and his manner at its easiest and friendliest.

“Well, Cousin Margaret,” he said, “and so they’ve left you behind! But I can assure you, you needn’t regret it. The party is an old-fogy affair, which will be long and tedious. There’s some glory to be got out of it, I dare say, but I’ll wager there isn’t much pleasure.”

Margaret heard him deliver himself of these affable observations with intense indignation. “Cousin Margaret” indeed! Did he presume to suppose for an instant, that he could atone for the indignity he had offered her, and the positive pain he had caused her, by a few careless words of flattery and a caressing tone of voice?

“I shouldn’t have cared to go with them in the least,” she answered coldly. “I am used to quiet. Cousin Eugenia said you had an engagement.”

“So I have; but that can be postponed, as also, I suppose, may be your meditations,” answered Louis, feeling a keener zest in the accomplishment of this reconciliation with Margaret since he saw it was likely to cost him some pains. “Suppose now you and I run off to the theatre. There’s a pretty little play on the boards, and we’ll take our chances for a seat.”

“Thank you, I don’t care to go out this evening,” responded Margaret, in the same voice.

There was a moment’s silence, which might have lasted longer, but for some symptoms of flight on the part of Miss Trevennon, which the young man saw and determined to thwart.

“I am afraid,” he began, speaking with some hesitation, “that I was so unfortunate as to offend you in some way last night, when your edifying visitor was here----”

“Please don’t refer to that episode, unless you mean to apologize for what you did,” Margaret interrupted him, with an inflection of controlled indignation. “Your laughing at him now does not mend matters.”

The young man’s whole expression changed. This was really a little too much.

“Apologize!” he said quickly, a dark frown gathering. “You are under some remarkable delusion, Miss Trevennon, if you think I acknowledge it to be a case for an apology. It was a most presumptuous intrusion, and as such I was compelled to resent it, on your account as well as my own.”

“Don’t let me be considered in the matter, I beg,” said Margaret, with a little touch of scorn. “I wish no such deed as that to be done in my name.”

“May I ask,” said Gaston, in a keen, distinct voice, “whether your championship of this gentleman is due to an admiration and endorsement of his manner and conduct, or to the more comprehensive fact of his being a Southerner? You Southerners are very clannish, I’ve been told.”

Margaret had always held herself to be superior to sectional prejudices, but there was something in his manner, as he said this, that infuriated her.

“We Southerners,” she answered, feeling a thrill of pride in identifying herself with the race that, by his looks and tones, he was so scornfully contemning, “are not only a clannish people, but also a courteous one, and the very last and least of our number is incapable of forgetting the sacred law of hospitality to a guest.”

Undoubtedly Miss Trevennon had forgotten herself, but it was only for a moment. She had said more than she meant to say, and she checked herself with an effort, and added hastily:

“I much prefer not to pursue this subject, Mr. Gaston. We will drop it just here, if you please.”

The fact that Mr. Gaston bowed calmly, and quietly returned to his work, by no means proved that he was in reality either calm or quiet. It was only by a great effort of self-control that he forced himself to be silent, for both the words and tones that this young lady had used were stingingly provoking. But what affected him most was the stunning presumptuousness of the whole thing. That this ignorant Southern girl, who had passed most of her life in a little insulated village, should venture to set him right on a point which affected his bearing as a man of the world, was infuriating. He mentally assured himself that his conduct toward the fellow, King, had been exactly what it should have been, and, moreover, he determined to take occasion to show Miss Trevennon that he neither regretted nor desired to apologize for it. He felt eager for an opportunity to do this, and all his accustomed prejudices and habits of mind grew deeper and stronger.

For a few moments longer they kept their places in perfect silence, Margaret in her seat before the fire and Gaston at the writing-table, when suddenly the door-bell rang. Neither moved nor spoke, and a few minutes later Thomas announced a gentleman to see Miss Trevennon.

“Alan Decourcy!” exclaimed Margaret, springing to her feet, in excited surprise, as the gentleman approached. “Why, Alan, this is unexpected!”

Mr. Decourcy came nearer, and taking both her hands in his, pressed them cordially.

“It would be ungrateful of me not to recognize my cousin Margaret, in this tall young lady,” he said, looking at her with obvious admiration in his calm, gray eyes, “and yet it is only by an effort that I can do so.”

At this instant Margaret remembered Louis, whom, in the confusion of this meeting, she had quite forgotten. She turned toward him, naming the two men to each other, and to her consternation she saw that he had risen, and was standing erect, with exactly the same repellant expression and attitude which he had assumed in greeting Major King the evening before. With the same frigid manner he acknowledged the present introduction, and after that little icy bow, he seated himself at his writing and turned his back, as before.

Mr. Decourcy, meantime, had taken a chair, from which Mr. Gaston’s attitude was perfectly evident to him, but he showed quite as little concern thereat as Major King had done. And yet what a different thing was this form of self-possession! Mr. Decourcy’s low-toned sentences were uttered with a polished accent that told, as plainly as all the words in the dictionary could have done, that he was a man of finished good-breeding. He treated Margaret with an affectionate deference that she could not fail to find extremely pleasing; inquired for Mr. and Mrs. Trevennon, and said he was determined to go down to see the old home and friends before the winter was over; told Margaret he was glad she had verified his predictions by growing tall and straight; asked if they still called her Daisy at home, and whether it would be accounted presumptuous for him to do so; said very little indeed of himself and his travels, and at the end of about fifteen minutes rose to take leave.

Margaret quietly replied to all his questions, and when he held out his hand to say good-bye, she made no motion to detain him, by word or sign.

“I am going back to Baltimore in a day or two,” he said, “and shall hardly see you again, but I hope you will allow me to arrange for a visit from you to my sister, to take place very soon. When she writes to you on the subject, as she will do at once, do let her find you willing to co-operate with her.”

While Margaret was uttering a hearty assent to this plan, Louis Gaston, who had, of course, heard all that had passed, was rapidly casting about in his mind as to how he should rescue himself from an odious position. There was now no more time to deliberate. He must act; and accordingly he came forward, with a return to his usual manner, which Margaret had once thought so good, and said frankly:

“I happened to have an important bit of work on hand, Mr. Decourcy, which it was necessary for me to finish in haste. I have been obliged, therefore, to forego the pleasure of making your acquaintance, but I hope you will give me your address that I may call upon you.”

“Thank you, I am at the Arlington for a day or two,” responded Decourcy, with his polished politeness of tone and manner, in which Margaret felt such a pride at the moment.

“It is quite early,” Louis went on, “and my brother and sister have deserted Miss Trevennon for a dinner. Will you not remain and spend the evening with her?”

Alan Decourcy possessed to perfection the manner which George Eliot describes as “that controlled self-consciousness which is the expensive substitute for simplicity,” and it was apparently with the most perfect naturalness that he pleaded another engagement and took leave, with compliments and regards to General and Mrs. Gaston. The price this young man had paid for this manner was some years of studious observance of what he considered the best models at home and abroad, and his efforts had been eminently successful. It imposed upon Margaret completely, and charming though she saw her cousin to be, she would have said that his manners were as unstudied as a child’s.

Louis Gaston, on his part, considered the matter more understandingly. He recognized in this cousin of Miss Trevennon a polished man of the world. The type was familiar enough to him, but he knew that this was an exquisite specimen of it, and the very fineness of Mr. Decourcy’s breeding made his own recent bearing seem more monstrously at fault. He felt very anxious to set himself right with Miss Trevennon at once, but almost before he had time to consider the means of doing this she had said good-night and gone up stairs.

He stood where she had left him, abstracted and ill at ease. What a power this girl had of making him feel uncomfortable; for it was not Decourcy’s censure and disapprobation that he deprecated half so much as Margaret’s. Again there came into his breast that new, strange feeling of self-distrust. He shook it off with a sigh, tired of self-communing and reflection, and anxious to act. He felt his present position unendurable.

Accordingly, he rang for Thomas and sent him to ask Miss Trevennon if he could speak to her for a few minutes. Thomas carried the message, and presently returned to say that Miss Trevennon would come down.

When she entered the room, soon after, she looked so stately, and met his eyes with such a cold glance, that a less determined man might have faltered. He was very much in earnest, however, and so he said at once:

“I ventured to trouble you to return, Miss Trevennon, in order that I might apologize to you for what I acknowledge to have been an act of rudeness. I am exceedingly sorry for it, and I ask your pardon.”

“You have it, of course, Mr. Gaston. An offence acknowledged and regretted is necessarily forgiven. I want you to tell me explicitly, however, what act you refer to.”

“I feel myself to have acted unwarrantably, indeed rudely, in my manner of receiving your cousin. I was angry at the time, and I forgot myself. I have done what little I could to atone for it to Mr. Decourcy, but I felt that I owed you an apology, because in acting thus toward a guest of yours I was guilty of a rudeness to you.”

Margaret was silent; but how she burned to speak!

“Am I forgiven?” said Gaston, after a little pause, for the first time smiling a little, and speaking in the clear, sweet tones that she had lately thought the pleasantest in the world. If she thought so still, she denied it to her own heart.

“I need hardly say, Mr. Gaston,” she answered, forcing back a sigh, “that as far as I am concerned, you have quite atoned for your treatment of my cousin.”

“Then am I reinstated in your favor, great Queen Margaret, and will you give me your royal hand upon it?”

He extended his hand, but Margaret quickly clasped hers with its fellow, and dropped them in front of her, while she slowly shook her head. There was none of the bright _naïveté_ so natural to her, in this action; she looked thoughtful and very grave.

The young man felt his pulses quicken; he resolved that she should make friends with him, cost what it might. It had become of the very first importance to him that he should be reinstated in that place in her regard which he knew that he had once held, and which he now felt to be so priceless a treasure.

“I am still unforgiven, I see,” he said; “but you will at least tell me what is my offence that I may seek to expiate it.”

Margaret raised her candid eyes to his and looked at him a moment with a strange expression; doubt, disappointment and glimmering hope were mingled in it.

“Shall I be frank with you?” she said, speaking from a sudden impulse. “I should like to, if I dared.”

“I shall be distressed if you are not,” he said, almost eagerly. “I beg you to say freely what you have in your mind.”

She did not speak at once, but sank into a chair, with a long-drawn respiration that might mean either sadness or relief. When Gaston had brought another chair and placed it close beside her and seated himself, she looked up and met his gaze. In the eyes of both there was the eagerness of youth--in the girl’s a hesitating wistfulness, in the man’s a subdued fire, somewhat strange to them. He was conscious of being deeply stirred, and if he had spoken first his words would probably have betrayed this, but it was Margaret who broke the silence, in tones that were calm and steady, and a little sad.

“Mr. Gaston,” she said, turning her eyes away from his face and looking into the fire, “it wouldn’t be worth while, I think, for me to pretend to feel the same toward you, after what has happened; it would be only pretence. Twenty-four hours ago I should have said you were the young man of all my acquaintance whom I felt to be the truest gentleman. I would not say this to your face now, except that it is quite passed.”

“I am glad that you have said it--most glad that it was ever so,” he said, with a hurried ardor; “but it is a great height to fall from. And have I indeed fallen?”

“Yes,” replied Margaret, not smiling at all, but speaking very gravely. “You began to fall the moment Major King came into this room last night, and you have been falling ever since, as I have gone over it all in my mind. You reached the bottom when my cousin came in this evening, and the shock was so great that it caused a slight rebound; but I don’t suppose that signifies much.”

If the girl’s eyes had not been fixed upon the fire she would probably have checked her speech at the sight of the expression which settled upon her companion’s face the moment Major King’s name was mentioned. But she did not see it, and was therefore unprepared for the hard, cold tone in which his next words were uttered.

“I have felt and acknowledged my fault, where your cousin was concerned,” he said. “Mr. Decourcy is a gentleman, and nothing but the fact of my being preoccupied with the resentment I felt at certain words of yours at the time, would have caused me to act toward him as I did. This explains, but does not justify my conduct, which I have acknowledged to be unjustifiable. But in the other case, Miss Trevennon, I must maintain that I acted rightly.”

“If that is your feeling about it,” Margaret said, “I think this conversation had better end here.”

“Why, Miss Trevennon?” he asked, a little defiantly. “I see no reason why it should.”

“Because its object, as I suppose, has been to bring about an understanding between us; and since you have defined your sentiments, it is clear to me that we could no more come to understand each other than if you spoke Sanscrit and I spoke French.”

“I believe you are mistaken,” he said. “I have a feeling that our positions are not so widely different as they may appear to be. Don’t refuse to listen to me, Miss Trevennon; that would be unjust, and you are not an unjust woman.”

It was a wonderful proof of the hold she had laid upon him that he took such trouble to exonerate himself in her eyes, and he felt it so himself, but he no longer denied the fact that Miss Trevennon’s good opinion was a matter of vast importance to him. The little impulses of anger which her severe words now and then called forth, were always short lived. One glance at the lovely face and figure near him was generally enough to banish them, and now, as he treated himself to a long look at the fair countenance, with its sweet downcast eyes and slightly saddened mouth, the impossibility of quarrelling with this exquisite creature presented itself so strongly, that he grew suddenly so friendly and at ease, that he was able to assume a tone that was pleasant, and almost gay, as he said:

“Now, Miss Trevennon, honor bright! You know perfectly well that you don’t like that man one bit better than I do.”

“I don’t like him at all. I yield that point at once, but I fail to see how that affects the matter. Children and savages regulate their manners according to their tastes and fancies, but I had always supposed that well-bred men and women had a habit of good-breeding that outside objects could not affect.”

“A gentleman’s house is his castle, Miss Trevennon,” said Gaston, with a return to his former tone and manner; “and it is one of the plainest and most sacred of his duties to see that the ladies of his household are protected from all improper contact. In my brother’s absence I stood in the position of the gentleman of the house, and I did right to adopt a line of conduct which would save you from a like intrusion in future. I owed it to you to do so.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Margaret, waving her hand with a pretty little motion of scornful rejection. “You allowed your consideration for me to constrain you too far. I have led a free, unrestricted life, and am accustomed to contact with those who come and go. No man has a finer feeling as to what is fitting for the ladies of his family than my father, but though I should live to reach old age, I shall never see him pay so great a price for my immunity from doubtful association as an act of rudeness to any one whomsoever.”

“I’ll tell you what it is, Miss Trevennon,” said Gaston, speaking rather warmly, “if you lived in Washington, you would see things differently. There’s no end to the pushing impertinence of the people who hang about a city--this one especially, and a gentleman does not like to have his friends in danger of meeting these obnoxious creatures at his house. It looks very queer, and people think so, too.”

“Is a gentleman’s position, then, so easily impeached? Now I should have thought that, with your name and prestige, you might weather a good many queer appearances. An annoyance of this sort would not be likely to happen often. That it is an annoyance, I do not deny; but I think there must be a better way of preventing such things than the one you adopted. And oh, Mr. Gaston, while we are on this subject, I wonder how you can ignore one point, the agony that you caused me!”

“That _I_ caused you, Miss Trevennon? It is hard, indeed, to lay at my door the discomfiture you endured last evening.”

“I think it was the most wretched evening I ever passed,” said Margaret, “and it was only your conduct that made it so.”

“My conduct? Now you _are_ unjust!”

“Not at all,” said Margaret. “I am not so wholly uninured to the necessity of sometimes hearing annoyances, as to be made miserable by having to talk for several hours with a man I do not like. You will never believe it, of course, but I do not think Major King is a man who lacks good feeling, the essence and soul of politeness. He belongs to a type that I know very well. He is an ignorant man and a very self-opinionated one, and he has been so long in need of association with his superiors that he has begun to think that he has none. He does not know the world, and is therefore unaware of the fact, that a man who holds the position of a gentleman may be guilty of many lapses without losing that position. I spoke just now of its being rather a light tenure, but, in some ways, it is very strong, it seems. I have said I do not like Major King, but I believe it is a mistake to call him vulgar. He is foolish and conceited, because he has had very slender opportunities to learn better. But oh, Mr. Gaston, how different with you! It is impossible not to draw the contrast. You know the world. You have studied and travelled. You are clever, cultivated and accomplished, and to what end? It has all resulted in an act which yesterday I would have wagered my right hand you were incapable of.”

She spoke with real feeling in her voice, and Gaston caught this inflection, and the sound of it quickened his blood. His ideas and emotions were strangely confused. He felt that he ought to be angry and resentful, but he was conscious only of being contrite.

“I have said too much. I have spoken far too freely,” said Margaret, breaking in upon his reflections. “I meant to be quite silent, but when you urged me to speak I forgot myself. I am sorry.”

“Don’t be,” the young man answered gently; “the fact that these are your opinions entitles them at least to my respect. But there is one thing I must mention before we drop this subject. I cannot be satisfied to allow you to retain the idea that I was accountable for the discomfiture you endured yesterday evening. You must know that I would joyfully shield you from all vexations and annoyances.”

“No,” said Margaret gently, shaking her head; “it was you, and not Major King, who made those hours so wretched to me. You made no effort to conceal the fact that you were outraged and indignant, and what could be clearer than that I had been the means of bringing this deeply resented annoyance upon you? If you had thought of me, you must have seen that.”

“I thought of you continually. It was chiefly upon your account that I resented the intrusion. It matters little to a man whom he happens to rub against, but it pains me deeply that a lady--that _you_ should not be screened from such intercourse.”

In spite of herself, Margaret was touched by this. A hundred times, since she had known him, she had seen Louis Gaston give evidence of an exquisite feeling of deference to women, and she could readily believe that he had been influenced on this occasion partly by consideration for herself; and while she resented the means used she did justice to the motive.

“It is much better that we have talked of this,” she said presently. “I do thank you for having that feeling about me. You could not know it was not needed. I will try to forget it all.”

“But you will not succeed,” he said; “your tone convinces me of that. I wish we understood each other better, Miss Trevennon, and I do not yet give up the hope that in time we may.”

He drew out his watch and looked at it, saying in tones that showed him to be in a serious mood:

“I have an appointment to see a man on business, and I must go and keep it. I shall probably be late coming in, and shall hardly see you again, so I’ll say good-night.”

As he spoke, he turned and went into the hall, and a moment later Margaret heard the front door close behind him.

As she slowly mounted the stairs to her room, she remembered that he had not asked her again to shake hands with him, in token of a re-establishment of the old relationship between them, and, on the whole, she did not regret it. It was as well that he should know that he was not restored to his former place in her regard. Her faith in him had been terribly shaken, and it seemed impossible he could ever be to her again the man she had once thought him.

Chapter IX.

When Mrs. Gaston and Miss Trevennon were driving along the avenue next morning, the former said abruptly, “Why didn’t you tell me of your cousin’s visit?”

“Oh, I didn’t see you when you came in, you know,” answered Margaret evasively. “Who told you?”

“Louis: and I gathered from certain indications that there had been something unpleasant in this meeting. I didn’t ask him to explain it to me, and I don’t ask you. I hate explanations. I have always foreseen that a certain amount of clashing was inevitable between you and Louis. You are both very well in your ways, but your ways are very different and not very reconcilable. I am very sorry anything of the sort happened; but I don’t let it prey upon my mind, and I hope you will not either.”

“Oh no,” said Margaret; “it was nothing very important. Mr. Gaston was rude to Alan when he first came in, but he atoned for it as far as he could afterward.”

At this moment a handsome drag containing two gentlemen and a liveried servant was seen approaching, and, as it came up to them, one of the gentlemen recognized Margaret with a bow and a smile.

“There’s Alan now!” said Margaret. “I wonder who the gentleman is, who is driving.”

“It’s young Lord Waring,” said Mrs. Gaston, with animation. “He is attached to the British Legation--the minister’s nephew, I believe. And so that was Alan Decourcy! What a charming young man! I wonder how Louis could be rude to a man like that.”

It was Margaret’s usual habit to pass over such remarks as this from Cousin Eugenia, as she was convinced of the fruitlessness of argument in her case; but this speech touched her on such a sore point that she could not help saying, in rather keen tones:

“A man who could be rude to any one whomsoever, must be somewhat difficult to count upon, I should think. He must be often puzzled to decide whom to treat civilly and whom to snub.”

“Oh, there you go, with your high-flown Southern notions,” retorted Mrs. Gaston, with imperturbable good-humor. “You’re your father’s own child! But we must have this elegant young man to dinner. Do you happen to know if he is engaged for this evening?”

“No,” said Margaret, “I didn’t hear him say.”

“He will probably call during the day.”

“No, he will not,” said Margaret, decidedly. “He told me he should not see me again before going to Baltimore. But he is to make arrangements for me to go over for a little visit soon, and I shall see him then.”

“Nonsense! He’s to come and see you at my house, and he’s to make friends with us all. Louis has been in the wrong, and he shall be made to see it. Leave that to me. I shall write young Decourcy a note as soon as I get home; and you shall write too, and endorse my invitation.”

Margaret felt very anxious that her cousin should come and dine at the Gastons’, but she seriously doubted his willingness to do so. Despite his perfect courtesy, there had been something in his manner toward Louis Gaston that made it clear that he did not desire to improve the latter’s acquaintance, and she wanted him to see that in the interview he had had with Gaston he had seen Louis at his worst, and to realize that he had a better side. And, on the other hand, she wanted the Gastons to see Alan Decourcy as a specimen of a Southern gentleman, who not only possessed, by inheritance, all the instincts and traditions that she clung to and respected, but who, in addition to these, had had sufficient contact with the world to get rid of that colossal belief in himself and his own methods and manners, as the only commendable ones, which she felt to be one of the chief failings of her countrymen. She had been too long accustomed to the arrogant assumption that a Southern man had better take the wrong way in any issue than learn the right way from a Yankee, not to rejoice in the prospect of presenting to her friends a young Southerner who was really enlightened, and who, if he loved his own land best, did so because he had compared it with others, and not because he was ignorant of everything beyond it.

But when Mrs. Gaston had despatched her note, inviting Mr. Decourcy to dine with them that evening at six, and there came a response regretting that a previous engagement for dinner prevented his accepting her invitation, Mrs. Gaston was quite provoked about it, and when they were at dinner she confided her disappointment to her husband and his brother.

“I called on him at the Arlington, this morning,” said Louis, “but he was out.”

“Yes, we met him,” said Mrs. Gaston. “He was driving with Lord Waring.”

Margaret felt a little throb of gratification, as her cousin made this announcement, of which she was deeply ashamed the next instant. “I am getting the most horrid ideas into my head,” she said to herself; “what a little snob I should have felt myself two months ago, to be filled with vulgar elation at the thought of Alan Decourcy being seen driving with a lord! It’s perfectly humiliating!” But all the same, the satisfaction remained.

“I wonder where he is going to dine,” Mrs. Gaston went on, presently. “He will call, of course, in acknowledgment of my invitation, and when he does, Margaret, you must ask him.”

The next morning he did call, and Mrs. Gaston and Margaret were at home to receive him. Margaret asked him, in the course of their talk, where he had dined the day before, and convicted herself a second time of snobbishness by the pleasure she felt in hearing him answer:

“At the British Legation. The minister happens to be an old acquaintance, and Waring and I were great chums at one time. By-the-way, he was, for some reason, rather struck with you, Daisy. He was with me when I met you driving yesterday, you remember. I told him you were a pet cousin of mine, and it may have been on that account that he asked me to bring him to call upon you.”

“I hope you will do so,” Mrs. Gaston said. “We should be glad to see him.”

There was no under-bred eagerness in her tones as she said it, but Margaret suspected that there might be a little in her heart, and she was not sorry when Decourcy answered, merely:

“Thank you; you’re very kind,” and then changed the subject by saying:

“I picked up a little present for you, when I was in Naples, Margaret. I unpacked it this morning and will send it to you.”

A few minutes after this he took leave, having made on both ladies an extremely good impression, which Mrs. Gaston owned to, in voluble phrases, and which Margaret concealed under a very calm exterior.

A day or two later Alan called again, and brought with him Lord Waring, who proved to be a little dull. He was shy and constrained in manner and hampered by a certain gawkiness which Decourcy’s exquisite ease of breeding made the more apparent. In spite of all this, however, there was something rather distinguished in the young foreigner, a sincerity and simplicity that stamped him as a man of worth, and a commanding self-security that was as far removed from self-sufficiency as possible.

It was arranged between Miss Trevennon and her cousin that they were to go to Baltimore in a few days, and it was not until he rose to take leave that he put into her hands a box, which he told her contained the little present he had spoken of.

As soon as the two gentlemen had gone, Margaret tore open the parcel with the eagerness of a girl to whom presents are somewhat rare, and discovered, in a beautiful little mosaic box, an antique silver chatelaine of the most rare and exquisite workmanship. There was a small watch, and other richly chased pendents, and the whole thing was pretty enough to delight any girl alive, even in the absence of a just appreciation of its value. Cousin Eugenia, however, being thoroughly initiated in all such matters, was handling and examining it with a depth of appreciation that almost brought tears to her eyes.

“Why, Margaret, it is a superb present,” she exclaimed; “a veritable antique, such as not one woman in a thousand is lucky enough to possess. You _must_ let me show it to Mrs. Norman; she is continually flaunting hers in peoples’ faces, and it doesn’t compare with this. I should say it is quite modern beside this. Just look at these clasps. The watch is not so antique, but the chains and clasps are wonderful.”

Margaret, as she looked on and listened, could scarcely conceal the amusement she felt. She had often before this had reason to observe the almost solemn emotion with which Cousin Eugenia was wont to regard certain articles of great luxuriousness or magnificence. She had seen her stirred to the soul by a plush _portière_, and almost tearful at the mere recollection of a French costume. Appreciation was one thing, but this was another. It transcended mere appreciation, and seemed, in some way, to be tinctured with the heroic.

“What an æsthete you would have made, Cousin Eugenia, if only the proper influences had been brought to bear!” said Margaret, laughing. “I can fancy you speaking, in awed and hushed accents, of a strange and mysterious color, or a significant and subtle bit of drapery. You consider yourself unemotional, but you have depths which may be stirred. It takes a silver chatelaine of a rare order to compass it, however, or something as imposing. I have to thank you for enlightening me as to the value of Alan’s gift. If I tell him you wept upon it, it may compensate in some measure for my Philistinism.”

“He must have taken great care in the selection of this present for you,” Mrs. Gaston said. “He admires you very much, Margaret. I begin to wonder what it means.”

Margaret laughed gayly.

“It means nothing whatever,” she said; “for goodness’ sake, don’t get up any absurd notion about Alan Decourcy and me. It’s a brand-new idea.”

“To you it may be--not to him. He has a way of watching you that means something. A careful, scrutinizing interest in all you do is observable, and often it changes into those quiet signs of approbation, which mean so much in a man like that. I shall be prepared for a prompt surrender, so don’t be afraid of startling me if you have anything to communicate from Baltimore. He told me the other day, that he had reached an eminently marriageable age, and was dreadfully afraid of passing beyond it. He also said that he much preferred to marry one of his own countrywomen; and I believe that is what brings him home.”

Margaret gave an amused attention to her cousin’s speculations, after which they fell to talking of the proposed visit to Baltimore, which Cousin Eugenia acquiesced in only on condition that it should be of but one week’s duration, and that Margaret should return to Washington for Christmas. This she agreed to do, resolving, if she found it desirable, to arrange for another visit before returning to the South.

Chapter X.

Margaret had been, from the first, eager to hear Decourcy’s criticism of the Gastons, and when she found herself seated by her cousin’s side, in the train on the way to Baltimore, with the prospect of an hour’s _tête-à-tête_ before her, she felt sure he would volunteer his impressions. She only hoped that he would remember that, in spite of all, she really liked them, and that he would refrain from speaking too resentfully on the subject. She was full of unuttered criticism herself, but a feeling of loyalty to the friends who had shown her so much kindness deterred her from introducing the topic. It soon appeared, however, that Mr. Decourcy had no intention of speaking of it at all. Of course they talked about the Gastons, but it was only in incidental allusions, and, after all, it was Margaret who invited his criticism by saying directly:

“What do you think of them, Alan?”

“Oh, pretty well,” he answered lightly. “The General is a little heavy, but his wife has vivacity enough to counterbalance him, and I should say the brother is a fine fellow.”

Margaret’s eyes opened wide with astonishment. Forgetting all her good resolutions, now that she and her cousin had so decidedly shifted positions, she said excitedly:

“Why, Alan, I supposed you thought him simply intolerable.”

Her cousin, in his turn, looked surprised.

“You know him better than I,” he said, “and it may be that that is his real character; but I met him at the club the other night and was rather struck with him. It may be all surface, however. He is a good-looking fellow--and has very good manners.”

“Good manners! Oh, Alan! His conduct, the first time you met him, was really terrible; it filled me with shame for him.”

“Oh yes; I remember that very well,” said Decourcy, quietly; “but I rather fancied, from certain signs, that that was mostly due to his being at odds with you, in some way. Yes,” he went on, looking faintly amused at the reminiscence, “he evidently intended to annihilate me, but when he saw that he had better not think of it, I must say he gave up with a good grace, and since then he has done everything in his power to manifest an intention to be civil. In this condition of affairs, I find him a very likeable, intelligent fellow.”

“And you bear him no grudge for the manner in which he treated you?”

“My dear Daisy! what’s the use of bearing grudges? Life is much too short. And besides, a great many people are like that.”

“What sort of people? Vulgar people and ignorant people, I suppose!”

“Well, not necessarily. I have often seen such conduct from people whom I could not, on the whole, call either ignorant or vulgar. It seems to be the instinct with some men to consider every stranger a blackguard, until he has proved himself not to be one.”

“It is abominable,” said Margaret; “perfectly barbarous! Such people have no right to claim to be civilized.”

“In point of fact, it is only a very small class, my dear, who can justly lay claim to that estate. I understand your feeling. How it carries me back! I used to feel much as you do, before I went out into the world.”

“I should think a knowledge of the world would make one more fastidious instead of less so,” said Margaret, sturdily.

“I think you are wrong in that. One learns to take things as they come, and loses the notion of having all things exactly to one’s taste.”

“But surely such flagrant impoliteness as Mr. Gaston’s would be condemned anywhere,” said Margaret. “You should have seen his treatment of Major King.”

She then proceeded to give a spirited account of that episode, to her cousin’s manifest interest and amusement.

“And how your hot Southern blood did tingle!” he commented, as she ended her recital. “You felt as if a crime had been committed in your sight, which it was your sacred duty to avenge--did you not? I had such feelings once myself, and perhaps, in both our cases, they may be traced to the same cause. Constant observation of such a model as your father presents would put most of the world at a disadvantage. There is a fineness of grain in him that one meets with but rarely anywhere. With him the feeling is that every man must be regarded and treated as a gentleman, until he has proved himself not to be one. It is a better way. But I think, after all, Margaret, that absolute good-breeding is a thing we must look for in individuals, and not in classes. It certainly does not exist in any class with which I have been thrown, and I cannot quite see how it could, as long as our social system of standards and rewards remains what it is. Do you remember a clever squib in _Punch, àpropos_ of all this?”

Margaret shook her head.

“I very rarely see _Punch_,” she said.

“It represents a conversation on the deck of an ocean steamer, between a beautiful American girl, returning from Europe, and several Englishmen, who are grouped about her. One of these is saying: ‘Now, Miss ----, do tell us. You’ve travelled a great deal, and seen the world, where have you met with the most elegant, refined, and high-bred men and women?’ ‘Among your British aristocracy,’ replies the young lady, frankly. Her response is greeted with a flutter of delight by the group, and their spokesman puts another question: ‘Now tell us, on the other hand,’ he says, ‘where you have met with the greatest ill-breeding and vulgarity.’ The answer comes as promptly as before: ‘Among your British aristocracy.’ That,” proceeded Decourcy, after waiting for Margaret’s ready tribute of appreciation, “according to my own small experience, states the case exactly, and, with certain limitations, the same thing is true of the aristocracy of every country. A low-born ignoramus could never be the finished snob that a man of some enlightenment may be; he wouldn’t know how. But confess, Margaret,--hot little rebel as you are!--have you never encountered the elements of snobbishness among your own people?”

“Yes; but I always supposed it came from ignorance and was greatly due to the fact that, since the war, our people have had so little opportunity of seeing the world, and have become insulated and prejudiced in consequence.”

“There is something in that; but it was always so, I fancy, more or less. We are by nature and habit a self-opinionated race, with certain honorable exceptions, of course. But this I will say--by way of a little private swagger between ourselves--that I think we are a courteous people, indeed the most courteous I have known, with more inherent good-feeling for others. That ought to comfort you.”

“Yes,” said Margaret, rather wistfully; “but there are so many other things. Our people are so indolent, it seems to me--at least since the war.”

“You always make me laugh, Daisy, when you introduce that little phrase, ‘since the war.’ You seem to find in it a satisfactory excuse for all the delinquencies of your beloved people. But the South, my sweet cousin, has never been a Utopia, any more than other lands. Wheat and tares must grow together everywhere.”

“I am glad you call them my beloved people,” said Margaret, after a little silence. “At home they do not think me very patriotic.”

“Whom do you mean by ‘they’?”

“I was thinking of Charley Somers----”

“Oh, by-the-way, I meant to ask about that pretty young fellow,” said Decourcy. “I used to make him very angry by telling him he ought to induce Bassett to take a newspaper, and suggesting that the name of the town should be changed to Cosmopolis. I am afraid Charley never loved me. I shudder still at the remembrance of the scowls he would cast upon me whenever I went near you. How is he?”

“Very well,” said Margaret; “not changed at all.”

“He hasn’t followed my advice about the paper