A STRANGE, SAD COMEDY

BY
MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL
AUTHOR OF “THE SPRIGHTLY ROMANCE OF MARSAC,” “CHILDREN OF
DESTINY,” “MAID MARIAN AND OTHER STORIES”
“LITTLE JARVIS,” ETC.

NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1896

A STRANGE, SAD COMEDY

I

ONE sunny November day, in 1864, Colonel Archibald Corbin sat placidly reading “The Spectator” in the shabby old library at Corbin Hall, in Virginia. The Colonel had a fine, pale old face, clean shaven, except for a bristly, white mustache, and his white hair, which was rather long, was combed back in the fashion of the days when Bulwer’s heroes set the style for hair-dressing. The Colonel—who was no more a colonel than he was a cheese-box—had an invincible placidity, which could not be disturbed by wars or rumors of wars. He had come into the world in a calm and judicial frame of mind, and meant to go through it and out of it calmly and judicially, in spite of rude shocks and upheavals.

Everything about Colonel Corbin had reached the stage of genteel shabbiness—a shabbiness which is the exclusive mark of gentlemen. His dignified frock-coat was white about the seams with much brushing, and the tall, old-fashioned “stock” which supported his chin was neatly but obviously mended. The furniture in the room was as archaic as the Colonel’s coat and stock. A square of rag carpet covered the floor; there had been a Brussels carpet once, but that had long since gone to the hospital at Richmond—and the knob of the Colonel’s gold-headed cane had gone into the collection-plate at church some months before. For, as the Colonel said, with a sort of grandiose modesty—“I can give but little, sir, in these disjointed times. But when I do give, I give like a gentleman, sir.”

There had been a time, not long before that, when he had been compelled to “realize,” as the Virginians euphemistically express it, upon something that could be converted into cash. This was when it became necessary to bring the body of his only son, who had been killed early in the war, back to Corbin Hall—and likewise to bring the dead man’s twelve-year-old daughter from the far South, where her mother had quickly followed her father across the gulf. Even in that sad extremity, the Colonel had never dreamed of “realizing” on the great piles of silver plate, which would, in those times, have commanded instant sale. The Corbins, who were perfectly satisfied to have their dining-room furnished with some scanty horsehair sofas and a few rickety chairs and tables, had a fancy for loading down rude cupboards with enough plate for a great establishment, according to a provincial fashion in Virginia. But instead of this, the Colonel sacrificed a fine threshing-machine and some of his best stock without a qualm. The Colonel had borne all this, and much more,—and the rare, salt tears had worn little furrows in his cheeks,—but he was still calm, still composed, under all circumstances.

The sun had just marked twelve o’clock on the old sun-dial in the garden, when the Colonel, happening to glance up, saw Aunt Tulip, the dairymaid, streaking past the window, with her petticoat over her head, followed by Nancy, the scullion, by little Patsy Jane, who picked up chips for the kitchen fire, by Tom Battercake, whose mission in life was indicated by his name,—the bringing in of battercakes being an important part of life in Virginia,—and by Juba, who was just beginning his apprenticeship by carrying relays of the eternal battercakes from the kitchen to the dining-room. And the next moment, Miss Jemima, the Colonel’s sister and double, actually danced into the room with her gray curls flying, and gasped, “Brother, the Yankees are coming!”

“Are they, my dear Jemima?” remarked the Colonel, rising. “Then we must prepare to meet them with all the dignity and composure possible.” As the Colonel opened the door, his own man, Dad Davy, nearly ran over him, blurting out the startling news, “Marse, de Yankees is comin’!” and the same information was screeched at him by every negro, big and little, on the plantation who had known it in time to make a bee-line for the house.

“Disperse to your usual occupations,” cried the Colonel, waving his hand majestically. The negroes dispersed, not to their business, but with the African’s natural love of a sensation to spread the alarm all over the place. By the time it got to the “quarters,”—the houses of the field-hands, farthest away from “de gret house,”—it was reported that Dad Davy had told Tom Battercake that he saw Aunt Tulip “runnin’ outen de gret house, and the Yankees wuz hol’in er pistol at ole Marse’ hade, and Miss Jemima, she wuz havin’ er fit with nobody but little Patsy Jane,” etc., etc., etc. What really happened was, the Colonel walked calmly out in the hall, urging Miss Jemima to be composed.

“My dear Jemima, do not become agitated. David, you are an old fool. Thomas Battercake, proceed to your usual employment at this time of day, cleaning the knives, or whatever it is. Would you have these Yankee miscreants to think us a body of Bedlamites?”

Just then, down the stairs came running pretty little twelve-year-old Letty, his granddaughter. Letty seized his veined and nervous hand in her two pink palms, and expressed a willingness to die on the spot for him.

The Colonel marched solemnly out on the porch, and by that time, what seemed to him an army of blue-coats was dashing across the lawn. A lieutenant swung himself off his horse, and, coming up the steps, demanded the keys of the barn, in a brogue that could be cut with a knife.

“No, sir,” said the Colonel, firmly, his gray hair moved slightly by the autumn wind, “you may break open my barn-door, but I decline to surrender the keys.”

The lieutenant, at that, struck a match against the steps, and a little point of flame was seen among the withered tendrils of the Virginia creeper that clung to the wooden pillars of the porch.

“Now, will you give up those keys, you obstinate ould ribil?” asked the lieutenant, fiercely.

“No!” responded the Colonel, quite unmoved. “The term that you apply to me is the one that was borne with honor by the Father of his country. Moreover, from your accent, which I may be permitted to observe, sir, is grotesque to the last degree, I surmise that you yourself may be a rebel to Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, for certainly there is nothing American about you.”

At this, a general snicker went around among the enemy, for discipline was not very well observed between officers and men in those days. Then, half a dozen cavalrymen dropped off their horses and made for the well, whence they returned in a twinkling with water to put out the fire that had begun to crackle ominously. The Colonel had not turned a hair, although Miss Jemima behind him and Letty had clung together with a faint cry.

The lieutenant rode off in the direction of the barn, ordering most of the men to follow him. Wagons were then seen coming down the lane, and going toward the barn to cart off the Colonel’s corn and wheat. The sympathies of those who were left behind were plainly with the Colonel. Especially was this so with a tall, lanky, grizzled sergeant, who had been the first man to put out the fire.

“I am much obliged to you, my good man,” said Colonel Corbin, loftily, “for your efforts in extinguishing the flames started by that person, who appears to be in command.”

“You’re welcome,” answered the lanky sergeant, with the easy familiarity of the rural New-Englander.

The lieutenant had showed unmistakably the bullying resentment of a peasant brought face to face with a gentleman, but the lanky sergeant indirectly felt some subtile sympathy with a spirit as independent as his own.

“I am glad, brother,” said Miss Jemima, “that these men who are left to guard us are plainly Americans. They will be more humane than foreigners.”

“Vastly more so,” answered the Colonel, calmly watching the loading of his crops upon the wagons in the distance. “There is, particularly in New England, a sturdy yeomanry, such as our friend here belongs to,” indicating the sergeant, “which really represents an admirable type of man.”

“Gosh,” exclaimed the sergeant, in admiration, “it’s the durndest, gamest thing I ever see, you standin’ up here as cool as a cucumber, when your property’s bein’ took. I kin stand fire; my grandfather, he fought at Lexington, and he didn’t flunk nuther, and I ain’t flunked much. But I swan, if you Johnny Rebs was a-cartin’ off my hay and stuff, I’d be a deal more excited ’n you are. And my old woman—gosh t’ almighty!”

The lanky sergeant seemed completely staggered by the contemplation of the old woman’s probable behavior upon such an occasion.

“There are other things, my friend,” answered the Colonel, putting his hands under his coat-tails and turning his back upon the barn in the distance, “which are of more consequence, I opine, than hay and corn. That, I think, the most limited intelligence will admit.”

“That’s so,” responded the lanky sergeant, “I kin do a sight better keepin’ bees up in Vermont than down here in Virginny fightin’ the rebs for eighteen dollars a month, but when Uncle Abe called for seventy-five thousand men I couldn’t a-kep’ them bees another day, not if I had been makin’ two hundred dollars a month at it. When I heard ’bout it, I kem in, and I said to the old woman: ‘I’ve got a call,’ and she screeched out, ‘A call to git converted, Silas?’—the old woman’s powerful religious,—and I says, ‘No, Sary—a call to go and fight for the Flag.’ And when we talked it over, and remembered about my grandfather,—he lived to be selectman,—the old woman says, ‘Silas, you are a miser’bul man, and you’ll git killed in your sins, and no insurance on your life, and it’ll take all I kin rake and scrape to bring your body home, but mebbe it’s your duty to fight for your country.’ And she said I might come, and here I am, and the bees is goin’ to thunder.”

“Unfortunately for me, sir,” said the Colonel, with a faint smile, but with unabated politeness. “However, I wish to say that you are pursuing your humble but unpleasant duty in a most gentlemanlike manner. For, look you, the term gentleman is comprehensive. It includes not only a man who has had the advantages of birth and station,—advantages which I may, with all modesty, claim, as enjoying them without any merit of my own,—but a man like yourself, of honorable, though humble parentage, who possesses a sturdy independence of spirit to which, I may say, my friend with the violent brogue is a stranger.”

The lanky sergeant, who had a dry, Puritanical humor of his own, was immensely tickled at this, and, at the same time, profoundly respectful of a man who could enter into disquisitions respecting what constituted a gentleman while his goods were being confiscated under his very nose.

“I tell you what,” said he, becoming quite friendly and confidential with the Colonel, “there’s a fellow with our command,—an Englishman,—and he’s got the same name as yours—Corbin—only he’s got a handle to it. He is Sir Archibald Corbin, and I never see a young man so like an old one as he is like you. He just seems to me to be your very image. He ain’t reg’larly attached nor nothin’; he’s just one of them aide’campers. He might be your son. Hain’t you got any son?”

At this, little Miss Letty, who had kept in the background clinging to Miss Jemima, came forward, and the Colonel put one arm around her.

“I had a son,—a noble son,—but he laid down his life in defense of his State, and this is his orphan child,” said he.

The lanky sergeant took off his cap and made a bow.

“And I’ll be bound,” he said, with infinite respect in his awkwardly familiar manner, “that your son was true grit.” He stopped and hunted about in his mind for a title to bestow upon the Colonel superior to the one he had, and finally hit upon “Judge,” to which title the Colonel was as much entitled as the one he bore.

“Judge, I don’t believe you’d turn a hair if there was a hundred pieces of artillery trained on you. I believe you’d just go on talkin’ in this ’ere highflown way, without kerin’ about anything except your dignity. And if your son was like you, he didn’t have no skeer in him at all, General.” By this time the sergeant had concluded that the old gentleman deserved promotion even from the title of Judge.

The Colonel inclined his head, a slight flush creeping into his wan face.

“You do me honor,” he said, “but you do my son only justice.”

By this time the wagons had been loaded up and were being driven off. The scared negroes that had flocked about the house from all over the plantation were peering, with ashy faces, around the corners and over the garden fence. The men were ordered to fall in, the lieutenant giving his orders at a considerable distance, and in his involuntary and marked brogue. The lanky sergeant and the few men with him mounted, and then all of them, simultaneously, took off their caps.

“Three cheers for the old game-cock!” cried the lanky sergeant enthusiastically. The cheers were given with a will and with a grin. The Colonel bowed profoundly, smiling all the time.

“This is truly grotesque,” he said. “You have just appropriated all of my last year’s crops, and now you are assuring me of your personal respect. For the last, I thank you,” and so, with cheering and laughter, they rode off, leaving the Colonel with his self-respect unimpaired, but minus several hundred bushels of corn and wheat. The negroes gradually quieted down, and the Colonel and Miss Jemima and little Miss Letty retired to the library. The Colonel took down his family tree, and began gravely to study that perennially entertaining document in order to place the Corbin who was serving as aide-de-camp in the Union army. Miss Jemima, too, was deeply interested, and remarked sagely:

“He is no doubt a great-grandson of Admiral Sir Archibald Corbin, who adhered to the royal cause and was afterward made a baronet by George III.”

At that very moment, the Colonel hit upon him.

“That is he, my dear Jemima. General Sir George Corbin, grandson of the admiral and son of Sir Archibald Corbin, second, married to the Honorable Evelyn Guilford-Hope, has one son and heir, Archibald, born May 18, 1842. His father must be dead, and he has but little more than reached his majority. Sister, if he were not in the Federal army, I should be most happy to greet him as a kinsman. But I own to an adamantine prejudice toward strangers who dare to meddle in civil broils.”

So had Miss Jemima, of course, who regarded the Colonel’s prejudices as direct inspirations from on high.

The very next week after the visitation of the Federal cavalry came a descent upon the part of a squad of Confederate troopers. As the Colonel and Miss Jemima entertained the commanding officers in the library, with the most elaborate courtesy and home-made wine, the shrill quacking and squawking of the ducks and chickens was painfully audible as the hungry troopers chased and captured them. The Colonel and Miss Jemima, though, were perfectly deaf to the clamor made by the poultry as their necks were wrung, and when a cavalryman rode past the window with one of Miss Jemima’s pet bronze turkeys hanging from his saddle-bow and gobbling wildly, Miss Jemima only gave a faint sigh, and looked very hard at little Miss Letty, who was about to shriek a protest against such cruelty. Even next morning she made not a single inquiry as to the startling deficit in the poultry yard. And when Aunt Tulip began to grumble something about “dem po’ white trash dat cum ter a gent’mun’ house, an’ cornfuscate he tu’keys settin’ on the nes’,” Miss Jemima shut her up promptly.

“Not a word, not a word, Tulip. Confederate officers are welcome to anything at Corbin Hall.”

A few nights after that, the Colonel sat in the library looking at the hickory fire that danced up the chimney and shone on the polished floor, and turned little Letty’s yellow hair into burnished gold. Suddenly a terrific knocking resounded at the door.

In those strange times people’s hearts sometimes stood still when there was a clamor for entrance; but the Colonel’s brave old heart went on beating placidly. Not so Dad Davy’s, who, with a negro’s propensity to get up an excitement about everything, exclaimed solemnly:

“D’yar dee come to bu’n de house over we all’s hades. I done dream lars night ’bout a ole h’yar cotch hade fo’mos’ in er trap, an’ dat’s a sho’ sign o’ trouble and distrus’fulness.”

“David,” remarked the Colonel, according to custom, “you are a fool. Go and open the hall door.”

Dad Davy hobbled toward the door and opened it. It was about dusk on an autumn night, and there was a weird half-light upon the weedy lawn, and the clumps of gnarled acacias, and the overgrown carriage drive of pounded oyster-shells. Nor was there any light in the large, low-pitched hall, with its hard mahogany sofa, and the walls ornamented with riding-whips and old spurs. A tall and stalwart figure stood before the door, and a voice out of the darkness asked:

“Is this the house of Mr. Archibald Corbin, and is he at home?”

The sound of that voice seemed to paralyze Dad Davy.

“Lord A’mighty,” he gasped, “’tis Marse Archy’s voice. Look a heah, is you—is you a ha’nt?”[1]

“A what?”

But without waiting for an answer Dad Davy scurried off for a moment and returned with a tallow candle in a tall silver candlestick. As he appeared, shading the candle with one dusky hand, and rolling two great eyeballs at the newcomer, he was handed a visiting card. This further mystified him, as he had never seen such an implement in his life before; he gazed with a fixed and frightened gaze at the young man before him, and his skin gradually turned the ashy hue that terror produces in a negro.

“Hi, hi,” he spluttered, “you is de spit and image o’ my young Marse, that was kilt long o’ dis lars’ year. And you got he voice. I kin mos’ swar you wuz Marse Archy Corbin, like he wuz fo’ he got married.”

“And my name is Archibald Corbin, too,” said the young man, comprehending the strange resemblance between himself and the dead and gone Archy that had so startled the old negro. He poked his card vigorously into Dad Davy’s hand.

“What I gwine to do with this heah?” asked Dad Davy, eying the card suspiciously.

“Take this card to your master.”

“And if he ax me who k’yard ’tis, what I gwi’ tell him?”

At this the young man burst out into a ringing, full-chested laugh. The negroes were new to him, and ever amusing, and he could not but laugh at Dad Davy’s simplicity. That laugh brought the Colonel out into the hall. He advanced with a low bow, which the stranger returned, and took the card out of Dad Davy’s hand, meanwhile settling his spectacles carefully on his nose, and reading deliberately:

“Sir Archibald Corbin, Fox Court.”

The Colonel fixed his eyes upon his guest, and, like Dad Davy, the resemblance to the other Archibald Corbin overcame him instantly. His lips trembled slightly, and it was a moment or two before he could say, with his usual blandness:

“I see you are Archibald Corbin, and I am your kinsman, also Archibald Corbin.”

“Being in your neighborhood,” said Sir Archibald, courteously, “I could not forbear doing myself the pleasure of making myself known to the only relatives I have on this side of the water.”

There was something winning and graceful about him, and the Colonel was much surprised to find that any man born and bred outside of the State of Virginia should have so fine an address.

“It gives me much gratification,” replied Colonel Corbin, in his most imposing barytone, “to acknowledge the relationship existing between the Corbins of Corbin Hall in Virginia and those of Fox Court in England.”

In saying this he led the way toward the library, where two more tallow dips in silver candlesticks had been lighted.

When young Corbin came within the circle of the fire’s red light—for the tallow dips did not count—Miss Jemima uttered a faint scream. This strange sensation that his appearance made in every member of the family rather vexed the young Englishman, who was a robust specimen, and with nothing uncanny about him, except the strange and uncomfortable likeness to a dead man whom he had never seen or heard of until that moment.

“Pardon me,” said the Colonel, after a moment, in a choked voice, “but your resemblance to my only son, who was killed while gallantly leading his regiment, is something extraordinary, and you will perhaps understand a father’s agitation”—here two scanty tears rolled down upon his white mustache. Even little Miss Letty looked at the newcomer with troubled eyes and quivering lips.

Young Corbin, with a hearty and healthy desire to get upon more comfortable subjects of discourse, mentioned that, having a taste for adventure, he had come to America during the terrible upheaval, and through the influence of friends in power he had obtained a temporary staff appointment, by which he was able to see something of actual warfare.

This statement was heard in absolute silence. Young Corbin received a subtile impression that his new-found relatives rather disapproved of him, and that the fact that he was a baronet with a big rent-roll, which had hitherto brought him the highest consideration, ranked as nothing with these primitive people. Naturally, this was a stab to the self-love of a young fellow of twenty-two, but with the innate independence of a man born to position and possessions, he refrained from forcing his consequence upon his relatives. The Colonel talked learnedly and eloquently upon the subject of the Corbins and their pedigree, to which Miss Jemima listened complacently. Little Miss Letty, though, seemed to regard the guest as a base intruder, and glowered viciously upon him, while she knitted a large woolen sock.

Supper was presently announced by Dad Davy. There might be a rag carpet on the floor at Corbin Hall, and tallow dips, but there was sure to be enough on the table to feed a regiment. This supper was the most satisfactory thing that young Sir Archy had seen yet among his Virginia relations. There was an “old ham” cured in the smoke from hickory ashes, and deviled turkey after Miss Jemima’s own recipe, and it took Tom Battercake, Black Juba, and little Patsy Jane, all together, to bring in supplies of battercakes, to which the invariable formula was: “Take two, and butter them while they are hot.”

The Colonel kept up a steady fusillade, reinforced by Miss Jemima, of all the family history, peculiarities, and what not, of the Corbin family. The Corbins were, to a man, the best judges of wines in the State of Virginia; they inherited great capacity for whist; and were remarkable for putting a just estimate upon people, and inflexible in maintaining their opinions. “Of which,” said the Colonel, suavely, “I will give you an example:

“My honored father always believed that it was the guest’s duty, when spending the night at a house, to make the motion toward retiring for the night. My uncle, John Whiting Corbin, held the contrary. As both knew the other’s inflexibility they avoided ever spending the night at each other’s houses, although upon the most affectionate and brotherly terms. Upon one occasion, however, my uncle was caught at Corbin Hall by stress of weather. The evening passed pleasantly, but toward midnight the rest of the family, including my sister Jemima and myself, retired, leaving my father and his brother amicably discussing the Virginia resolutions of ’98. As the night wore on both wished to retire, but my father would not transgress the code of etiquette he professed, by suggesting bedtime to his guest, nor would my uncle yield the point by making the first move.

“When, at daylight the next morning, my boy Davy came in to make the fire, here, sir, in this library, I assure you, my father and his brother were still discussing the resolutions of ’98. They had been at it all night.”

This was one of the Colonel’s crack stories, and Sir Archy laughed at it heartily enough. But with all this studied hospitality toward himself, he felt more, every moment, in spite of the Colonel’s sounding periods, that he was merely tolerated at best, and as he had never been snubbed before in his life, the experience did not please him. At ten o’clock he rose to go, saying that he preferred traveling by night under the circumstances. The Colonel invited him to remain longer, with careful politeness, but when the invitation was declined, no more was visible than civil regret. Nevertheless, the Colonel went himself to see that Sir Archy’s horse had been properly fed and rubbed down, and Miss Jemima went to fetch a glass of the home-made wine, which nearly choked Sir Archy in the effort to gulp it down. He was alone for a few moments with pretty little Letty, who had not for a moment abandoned her standoffish attitude.

“Will you be glad to see me the next time I come, little cousin?” he asked, mischievously.

Here was a chance for Letty to annihilate this brazen newcomer, and she proceeded to do it by quoting one of the Colonel’s most elaborate phrases. She got slightly mixed on the word “adamantine,” but still Letty thought it sounded very well when she remarked, loftily, “I have an anti-mundane prejudice toward foreigners meddling in domestic broils.” And every word was punctuated by a scowl.

Miss Letty fondly imagined that the young Englishman would be awed and delighted at this prodigious remark in one so young, but when Sir Archy burst into one of his rich and ringing laughs, Letty promptly realized that he was laughing at her, and could have pulled his hair with pleasure.

Sir Archy was still laughing and Letty was still blushing and scowling when their elders returned. In a little while Sir Archy was galloping down the sandy lane at Corbin Hall, with the faint lights of the grim old house twinkling far behind him. It was an odd experience, and not altogether pleasing. For once, he had met people who knew he was a baronet, and who did not care for it, and who knew he had a great property, and who did not feel the slightest respect for it. There was something sad, something ludicrous, and something noble and disinterested about those refined, unsophisticated people at Corbin Hall; and when that little sulky, frowning thing grew up, she would be a beauty, Sir Archy decided, as he galloped along the sandy road through the moonlight night.

II

TEN summers after this, the old Colonel and Miss Jemima and Miss Letty scraped up money enough to spend a summer in a cheap boarding-house at Newport. Many surprises awaited the Colonel upon his first visit to Newport since “before the war, sir.” In the first place, the money they paid for their plain rooms seemed a very imposing sum to them, and they were extremely surprised to find how small it was regarded at Newport.

“Newport, my dear Jemima and Letty, is a more expensive place than the White Sulphur in its palmiest days, when it had a monopoly of the chivalry of the South,” announced the Colonel, oracularly.

Letty had innocently expected a great triumph, especially with her wardrobe. She had no less than five white Swiss muslin frocks, all tucked and beruffled within an inch of her life, and she had also a lace parasol, besides one that had belonged to her mother, and several lace flounces and a set of pearls. This outfit, thought Letty, vain and proud, was bound to make a sensation. But it did not. However, no matter what Letty wore, she was in no danger of being put behind the door. First, because she was so very, very pretty, and second, because she was so obviously a thoroughbred, from the sole of her little arched foot, up to the crown of her delicate, proud head. And Letty was so extremely haughty. But she soon found out that Swiss muslin frocks don’t count at Newport, and that even a Corbin of Corbin Hall, who lodged in a cheap place, was not an object of flattering attention.

And the more neglected she was, the more toploftical she became. So did the Colonel, and so did Miss Jemima. Walking down Bellevue avenue with the Colonel, Letty would criticize severely the stately carriages, the high-stepping horses and the superbly dressed women and natty men that are characteristic of that swell drive. But when a carriage would pass with a crest on its doors, the Colonel’s white teeth showed beneath his mustache in a grim smile.

“One of the Popes,” he remarked, with suave sarcasm, “who started in life as a cobbler, took for his papal arms a set of cobblers’ tools. But I perceive no indication whatever, in this community of retired tradespeople, that they have not all inherited their wealth since the days of the Saxon Heptarchy.”

For a time it seemed as if not one single person at Newport had ever heard of Colonel Archibald Corbin, of Corbin Hall. But one afternoon, as Letty and her grandfather were taking a dignified promenade,—they could not afford to drive at Newport,—they noticed a stylish dog-cart approaching, with a hale, manly fellow, neither particularly young nor especially handsome, handling the ribbons. Just as he caught sight of the Colonel he pulled up, and in another moment he had thrown the reins to the statuesque person who sat on the back seat, and was advancing toward the old man, hat in hand.

“This must be Colonel Corbin. I can’t be mistaken,” he cried, in a cordial, rich voice.

Letty took in at a glance how well set up he was, how fresh and wholesome and manly.

“It is Colonel Corbin,” replied the Colonel, with stately affability.

“But you don’t remember me, I see. Perhaps you recall my father, John Farebrother—wines and liquors. We’re not in the business now,” he said, smiling, turning to Letty with a sort of natural gracefulness, “but, contrary to custom, we haven’t forgotten it.”

The Colonel seized Farebrother’s hand and sawed it up and down vigorously.

“Certainly, certainly,” he said. “Your father supplied the cellars of Corbin Hall for forty years, and the acquaintanceship begun in a business way was continued with very great pleasure on my part, and I frequently enjoyed a noble hospitality at your father’s villa here, in the good old days before the war.”

“And I hope you will extend the same friendship to my father’s son,” said Farebrother, still holding his hat in his hand, and looking very hard at Letty, as if to say, “Present me.”

“My granddaughter, Miss Corbin,” explained the Colonel, and Letty put her slim little hand, country fashion, when she was introduced, into the strong, sunburned one that Farebrother held out to her. Farebrother nodded to the statuesque person in the dog-cart, and his nod seemed to convey a whole code of meaning. The dog-cart trundled off down the road, and Farebrother walked along by Letty’s side, the Colonel on the other. Letty examined this new acquaintance critically, under her dark lashes, anxiously endeavoring to belittle him in her own mind. But having excellent natural sense, in about two minutes and a half she recognized that this man, who mentioned so promptly that his father dealt in wines and liquors, was a gentleman of the very first water. In fact, there is no discounting a gentleman.

Almost every carriage that passed caused Farebrother to raise his hat, and Letty took in, with feminine astuteness, that he was a man of large and fashionable acquaintance. He walked the whole way back to their dingy lodgings with them, and then went in and sat in the musty drawing-room for half an hour. What had Miss Corbin seen at Newport? he asked. Miss Corbin had seen nothing, as she acknowledged with a faint resentment in her voice. This Mr. Farebrother pronounced a shame, a scandal, and a disgrace. She must immediately see everything. His sisters would call immediately; he would see to that. His mother never went out. He hoped to see Miss Corbin at a breakfast or something or other his sisters were planning. They had got hold of an Englishman with a handle to his name, and although the girls pretended that the Britisher was only an incident at the breakfast, that was all a subterfuge. But Miss Corbin should judge for herself, and then, after thanking the Colonel warmly for his invitation to call again, Farebrother took his leave.

The very next afternoon, an immaculate victoria drove up to the Corbins’ door, and two immaculately stylish girls got out. Miss Jemima and the Colonel were not at home, so Letty received the visitors alone in the grim lodging-house parlor. They got on famously, much of the sweetness and true breeding of the brother being evident in the sisters. They were very English in their voices and pronunciation and use of phrases, but in some way it did not sound affected, and they were genuinely kind and girlishly cordial. And it was plain that “our brother” was regarded with extreme veneration. Would Miss Corbin come to a breakfast they were giving next Saturday? Miss Corbin accepted so delightedly, that the Farebrother girls, who were not accustomed to Southern enthusiasm over trifles, were a little startled.

Scarcely had the young ladies driven off when up came Mr. Farebrother. Letty, at this, their second meeting, received him as if he had been a long-lost brother. He, however, who knew something about the genus to which Letty belonged, grinned with keen appreciation of her rapturous greeting, and was not the least overpowered by it. He hung on in the most unfashionable manner until the Colonel arrived, who was highly pleased to meet his young friend, as he called Farebrother, who had a distinct bald spot on the top of his head, and the ruddy flush of six-and-thirty in his face. Farebrother desired the Colonel’s permission to put him up at the Club, and offered him various other civilities, all of which the Colonel received with an inconceivably funny air of conferring a favor instead of accepting one.

Newport assumed an altogether different air to the Corbins after the Farebrother raid. But Letty’s anticipations of the breakfast were dashed with a little secret anxiety of which she was heartily ashamed. What should she wear? She had never been to a fashionable breakfast before in her life. She hesitated between her one elaborate gown, and one of her fresh muslins, but with intuitive taste she reflected that a white frock was always safe, and so concluded to wear one, in which she looked like a tall white lily.

The day of the breakfast arrived; the noon-day sun shone with a tempered radiance upon the velvety turf, the great clumps of blue and pink hydrangeas, and the flower borders of rich and varied color, on the shaven lawns. It was a delicious August forenoon, and the warm and scented air had a clear and charming freshness. The shaded piazzas of the Farebrother cottage, with masses of greenery banked about them, made a beautiful background for the dainty girls and well-groomed men who alighted from the perfect equipages that rolled up every minute. Presently a “hack” in the last stage of decrepitude passed through the open and ivy-grown gateway, and as it drew up upon the graveled circle, Letty Corbin, in her white dress and a large white hat, rose from the seat. Farebrother was at her side in an instant, helping her to descend. Usually, Letty’s face was of a clear and creamy paleness, but now it was flushed with a wild-rose blush. It had suddenly dawned upon her that the ramshackly rig, which was quite as good as anything she was accustomed to in Virginia, did not look very well amid the smart carriages that came before and after her. However, it in no wise destroyed her self-possession, as it would have done that of some of the girls who descended from the smart carriages. And there was Farebrother with his kind voice and smile, waiting to meet her at the steps, and pouring barefaced compliments in her ear, which last Miss Letty relished highly.

The two girls received her cordially, and introduced her to one or two persons. But they could not devote their whole time to her, and in a little while Letty drifted into the cool, shaded, luxurious drawing-room, and found that she was left very much to herself. The men and girls around her chatted glibly among themselves, but they seemed oblivious of the fact that there was a stranger present, to whom attention would have been grateful. Two very elegant looking girls talked directly across her, and were presently joined by a man who quite ignored her even by a glance, and although she sat between him and the girls, he kept his eyes fixed on them. Letty thought it was very bad manners.

“At Corbin Hall,” she thought bitterly, “a stranger would have been overwhelmed with kind attentions”; but apparently at Newport a stranger had no rights that a cottager was bound to respect.

“The fact is, Miss Cornwell,” said the man, in the studied, low voice of the “smart set,” “I’ve been nearly run off my legs this week by Sir Archy Corbin. He’s the greatest fellow for doing things I ever saw in my life. And he positively gives a man no rest at all. We’ve always been good friends, but I shall have to ‘cut him’ if this thing keeps up.”

The lie in this statement was not in the least obvious to Letty, but was perfectly so to the young women, who knew there was not the remotest chance of Sir Archy Corbin being cut by any of their set. The name, though, at once struck Letty, and her mobile face showed that she was interested in the subject.

“Will he be at the meet on Thursday, Mr. Woodruff?” asked the girl, suddenly dropping her waving fan and indolent manner, and showing great animation. At this, Woodruff answered with a slightly embarrassed smile:

“Well—er—no, I hardly think so. You know, in England, this isn’t the hunting season—”

“Oh, no,” struck in Miss Cornwell, perfectly at home in English customs, “their hunting season is just in time to break up the New York season.”

Letty’s face, which was very expressive, had unconsciously assumed a look of shocked surprise. Hunting a fox in August! For Letty knew nothing of the pursuit of the fierce and cunning aniseseed bag. Her lips almost framed the words, “How dreadful!”

Woodruff, without glancing at her, but taking in swiftly the speaking look of disgusted astonishment, framed with his lips something that sounded like “Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.”

A blush poured hotly into Letty’s face. The rudeness of talking about her before her face angered her intensely, but did not for a moment disconcert her. There was a little pause. Miss Cornwell looked straight before her with an air of amused apprehension. Then Letty spoke in a clear, soft voice:

“You are mistaken,” she said, looking Woodruff calmly in the face. “I do not belong to that society. I do not altogether believe in professional philanthropy. I was, it is true, shocked at the idea of fox-hunting in August, because, although I have been accustomed to seeing hunting in a sportsmanlike manner all my life, the fox was given a chance for his life.”

It was now Woodruff’s turn to blush, which he did furiously. He was not really a rude man, but his whole social training had been in the line of trying to imitate people of another type than himself, and consequently his perceptions were not acute. The imitative process is a blunting one. But he did not desire to give anybody pain, and the idea of a social blunder was simply harrowing to him.

“Pray excuse me,” he said, and looked a picture of awkward misery, and Miss Cornwell actually seemed to enjoy his predicament.

Letty had instantly risen as soon as she had spoken, but by the time she had taken a step forward there was a little movement in front of her, and the next moment she saw the same Sir Archibald Corbin she had seen ten years ago, standing in front of her, holding out his hand and saying: “May I ask if this is not my cousin, Miss Corbin, of Corbin Hall? You were a little girl when I saw you last, but I cannot be mistaken.”

“Yes, I am Letty Corbin,” answered Letty, giving him her hand, impulsively; she would have welcomed her deadliest enemy at that moment, in order to create a diversion.

But the effect of this meeting and greeting upon Woodruff and Miss Cornwell, and the people surrounding them, was magnetic. If Letty had announced, “I am the sole and only representative of the noble house of Plantagenet,” or Howard, or Montmorenci, their surprise could not have been greater.

Sir Archy spoke to them with that cool British civility which is not altogether pleasing. Woodruff had time to feel a ridiculous chagrin at the footing which his alleged friend put him on, and Letty was quite feline enough to let him see it. She fixed two pretty, malicious eyes on him, and smiled wickedly when instead of making up to Sir Archy, he very prudently turned toward Miss Cornwell, who likewise seemed secretly amused.

But Sir Archy’s manner toward Letty was cordiality itself. He asked after the Colonel.

“And such a royal snubbing as I got from him that time so long ago,” he said, fervently. “I hope he has no intention of repeating it.”

“I can’t say,” replied Letty, slyly, and examining her cousin with much approval. He had the delicious, fresh, manly beauty of the Briton, and he had quite lost that uncanny likeness to a dead man which had been so remarkable ten years ago. He had, however, the British simplicity which takes all of an American girl’s subtilities in perfect candor and good faith. He and Letty got along wonderfully together. In fact, Letty’s fluency and affability was such that she could have got on with an ogre. But presently Farebrother came up and carried her off, under Sir Archy’s very nose, toward the dining-room. As Letty walked across the beautiful hall into the dining-room beyond, some new sense of luxury seemed to awaken in her. She was familiar enough with certain elegancies of life,—at that very moment she had her great-grandmother’s string of pearls around her milky-white throat,—and Corbin Hall contained a store of heirlooms for which the average Newport cottager would have bartered all his modern bric-à-brac. But this nicety of detail in comfort was perfectly new and delightful to her, and she confided so much to Farebrother.

“You see,” she complained, confidentially, “down in Virginia we spend all we have on the luxuries of life, and then we have to do without the necessaries.”

“I see,” answered Farebrother, “but then you’ve been acknowledged as a cousin by an English baronet. Think of that, and it will sustain you, and make you patient under your trials more than all the consolation of religion.”

“I’ll try to,” answered Letty, demurely.

“And he is a first-rate fellow, too,” continued Farebrother, who could be magnanimous. “I made up to him at the club before I knew who he was—”

“Oh, nonsense. You knew he was a baronet.”

“I’ll swear I didn’t. Presently, though, it leaked out that he was what the newspapers call a titled person. We were talking about some red wine that a villain of a steward was trying to palm off on us, and Sir Archy gave his opinion, which was simply rubbish. I told him so in parliamentary language, and when he wanted to argue the point, I gently reminded him that my father and my grandfather had been in the wine-importing line, and I had been born and bred to the wine business.”

By this time Farebrother’s light-blue expressive eyes were dancing, and Letty fully took in the joke.

“The descendants of the dealers in tobacco, drugs, and hardware, who were sitting around, were naturally much pained at my admission, but Sir Archy wasn’t, and actually gave in to my opinion. He stuck to me so close—now, Miss Corbin, I swear I am not lying—that I couldn’t shake him off, and he walked home with me. Of course I had to ask him in, and then the girls came out; they couldn’t have been kept away from him unless they had been tied, and he has pervaded the house more or less ever since. That is how it is that the noble house of Corbin is to-day accepting the hospitality of the humble house of Farebrother.”

“Very kind of us, I’m sure,” said Letty, gravely, “but I’d feel more important if I had more clothes. You can’t imagine how fine my wardrobe seemed down in Virginia, and here I feel as if I hadn’t a rag to my back.”

“A rag to your back, indeed,” said Farebrother, with bold admiration. “Those white muslin things you wear are the prettiest gowns I ever saw at Newport.”

Letty smiled rapturously. The breakfast was delightful to two persons, Letty Corbin and Tom Farebrother. After it was over they went out on the lawn, and watched the long, soft swell of the summer sea breaking at their feet, and the gay hydrangeas nodding their pretty heads gravely in the sunshine. And in a moment or two Sir Archy came up and joined them. Farebrother held his ground stoutly; he always held it stoutly and pleasantly as well, and the three had such a jolly time that the correct young ladies who used their broad a’s so carefully, and the correct young gentlemen in London-made morning clothes, stared at such evident enjoyment. But it was a respectful stare, and even Letty’s ramshackly carriage was regarded with toleration when it rattled up. Sir Archy, however, asked permission to drive her back in his dog-cart, which Letty at once agreed to, much to Tom Farebrother’s frankly expressed disgust.

“There you go,” he growled in her ear. “Just like the rest; the fellow has a handle to his name and that’s enough.”

“Why didn’t you offer to drive me home yourself?” answered Letty, with equally frank coquetry, bending her eyes upon him with a challenge in their hazel depths.

“By George, why didn’t I?” was Farebrother’s whispered reply, as he handed her over to Sir Archy.

Miss Corbin’s exit was much more imposing than her arrival, as she drove off, sitting up straight and slim, in Sir Archy’s dog-cart.

“Do you know,” said he, as they spun along the freshly watered drive in the soft August afternoon, “that you are the first American I have seen yet? All of the young ladies that I see here are tolerably fair copies of the young ladies I meet in London drawing-rooms; but you are really what I fancied an American girl to be.”

“Thank you,” answered Letty, dubiously. “But I daresay I am rather better behaved than you expected to find me.”

“Not at all,” answered Sir Archy, with energy.

This was a good beginning for an acquaintance, and when Letty got home she could not quite decide which she liked the better, Tom Farebrother or this sturdy, sensible English cousin.

It is scarcely necessary to say that Letty’s fortune was made as far as the Newport season went. Her opinions of people and things at Newport underwent a sudden change when she began to be treated with great attention. She triumphantly confided to both Farebrother and Sir Archy that she did not mean to let the Colonel start for Virginia until he had spent all his money, and she had worn out all her clothes, and would be obliged to go home to be washed and mended. Meanwhile she flirted infamously and impartially with both, after a manner indigenous to the region south of Mason and Dixon’s line.

III

THE period so frankly mentioned by Letty, when the party from Corbin Hall would get to the end of their financial tether, arrived with surprising promptness. But something still more surprising happened. The Colonel quite unexpectedly had dumped upon him the vast and imposing sum of two thousand dollars. This astonishing fact was communicated to Farebrother one sunny day when he and Letty were watching a game of tennis at the Casino.

“Do you know,” said she, turning two sparkling eyes on him from under her large white hat, and tilting her parasol back gaily, “we are not going away, after all.”

“Thank the Lord,” answered Farebrother, with fervent irreverence.

He had found out that he could talk any amount of sentiment to Letty with impunity. In fact, she rather demanded excessive sentiment, of which she nevertheless believed not one word. Farebrother, who had seen something of Southern girls, very quickly and accurately guessed that it was the sort of thing Letty had been used to. But he was amused and charmed to find, that along with the most inveterate and arrant coquetry, she combined a modesty that amounted to prudery, and a reserve of manner in certain respects which kept him at an inexorable distance. He could whisper soft nonsense in Letty’s ear all day long, and she would listen with an artless enjoyment that was inexpressibly diverting to Farebrother. But when he once attempted to touch her hand in putting on her wrap, Letty turned on him with an angry stare that disconcerted him utterly. It was not the surprise of an ignorant girl, but the thorough resentment of an offended woman. Farebrother took care not to transgress in that way again.

Letty fully expected him to express rapturous delight at her announcement, and was not disappointed. “It’s very strange,” she continued, twirling her parasol and leaning forward in her chair; “grandpapa’s father lent some money a long time ago,—I think the Corbins got some money by hook or by crook in 1814,—and they lent it all out, and ever since then they have been borrowing, as far as I can make out. Well, some of it was on a mortgage that was foreclosed the other day, so grandpapa says, and he got two thousand dollars.”

Letty held off to watch the effect of this stunning statement. Two thousand dollars was a great deal of money to her. Farebrother, arrant hypocrite that he was, had learned the important lesson of promptly adopting Letty’s view of everything, and did it so thoroughly that sometimes he overdid it.

“Why, that’s a pot of money,” he said gravely. “It’s quite staggering to contemplate.”

Letty was not deficient in shrewdness, and she knew by that time that the standard of values in Virginia and at Newport varied. So she looked at him very hard, and said, sternly:

“I hope you are not telling me a story.”

“Of course not. But really,” here Farebrother became quite serious, “it depends a good deal on how it comes. Last year, for example, I only made three thousand dollars. You see I’ve got enough to live upon without work, and that’s a fearful drawback to people giving me work. I’m an architect, and I love my trade. But I can’t convince people that I’m not a dilettante. I am ashamed to eat the bread of idleness, and yet—here’s a question that comes up. Has any man a right, who does not need to work, to enter into close competition with those who do need it?”

Farebrother was very much in earnest by that time. He saw that these nineteenth-century problems had never presented themselves to Letty’s simple experience. But they were of vast moment to him. Letty fixed her large, clear gaze upon him very much as if he were a new sort of animal she was studying.

“I thought here, where you are all so rich, you cared for nothing except how to enjoy yourselves.”

“Did you? Then you made a huge mistake. Why, I know of men literally wallowing in money who work for the pure love of work. I could work for love of work, too, but I tell you, when I see a poor fellow, with a wife and family to support, slaving over plans and specifications, and then I feel that my competition is making that man’s chances considerably less, it takes the heart out of my work. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll say that I could make three thousand dollars several times over if I went at it for a living—because like all men who work from love, not from necessity, I am inclined to believe in my own capacity and to have a friendly opinion of my own performances. You may disparage everything about me, and although it may lacerate my feelings, I will forgive you. But just say one word against me as an architect, and everything is over between us.”

“I sha’n’t say anything against you or your architecture either,” replied Letty, bringing the battery of her eyes and smile to bear on him with shameless cajolery.

But just then their attention was attracted by a group approaching them over the velvet turf. Sir Archibald Corbin was in the lead, escorting two tall, handsome, blonde young women. They were evidently sisters and evidently English. They had smooth, abundant light hair, knotted low under their turban hats, and their complexions were deliciously fresh. Although the day was warm, and Letty found her sheer white frock none too cool, and every other woman in sight had on a thin light gown, these two handsome English women wore dark, tight-fitting tweed frocks, and spotless linen collars. Behind them walked two men, one a thoroughly English-looking young fellow, while the last of the party so completely fixed Letty’s attention as soon as she put her eyes on him, that she quite forgot everybody else.

He was an old man, small, slight, and scrupulously well dressed. His hair was perfectly white, and his face was bloodless. His clothes were a pale gray, his hat was a paler gray, and he was in effect a symphony in gray. Even the rose at his buttonhole was white. But from his pallid face gleamed a pair of the blackest and most fascinating eyes Letty had ever beheld. It was as if they had gained in fire and intensity as his blood and his life grew more sluggish. And however frail he might look, his eyes were full of vitality. He walked along, leaning upon the arm of the young man and speaking but little. The party stopped a little way off to watch a game of tennis, while Sir Archy made straight for Letty.

“May I introduce my friends to you?” he asked, in a low voice. “Mrs. Chessingham, and her sister, Miss Maywood, Chessingham and Mr. Romaine. Chess is one of the best and cleverest fellows going, and of good family, although he is a medical man, and he is traveling with Mr. Romaine—a rich old hypochondriac, I imagine.”

As soon as he mentioned Mr. Romaine a flood of light burst upon Letty. “Isn’t he a Virginian?—an American, I mean? And didn’t grandpapa know him hundreds of years ago?” she asked, eagerly.

“I have heard he was born in Virginia, as poor Chessingham knows to his cost,” answered Sir Archy, laughing quietly. “After having gone all over Europe, Asia, and Africa, the old hunks at last made up his mind that he would come back to America. Chess was very well pleased, particularly as Mrs. Chessingham and Miss Maywood were invited to come as his guests. But old Romaine swears he means to take the whole party back to Virginia to his old place there that he hasn’t seen for forty years, and naturally they’ll find it dull.”

Sir Archy possessed in perfection that appalling English frankness which puts to shame the characteristic American caution. But Sir Archy’s mistake was Farebrother’s opportunity.

“Deuced odd mistake, finding Virginia dull,” remarked that arch hypocrite, at which Letty rewarded him with a brilliant smile.

Sir Archy had got his permission by that time, and he went across the grass to his friends and brought them up.

The two English women looked at Letty with calmly inquisitive eyes full of frank admiration. Letty, with a side-look and an air of extreme modesty, took them from the top of their dainty heads to the soles of their ugly shoes at one single swift glance. Then Mr. Chessingham was presented, and last, Mr. Romaine. Mr. Romaine gave the impression of looking through people when he looked at them and nailing them to the wall with his glance. And Letty was no exception to the rule. He fixed his black eyes on her, and said in a peculiarly soft, smooth voice: “Your name, my dear young lady, is extremely familiar to me. Archibald Corbin and his brothers were known to me well in my youth at Shrewsbury plantation.”

“Mr. Archibald Corbin is my grandfather, and he has spoken often of you,” replied Letty, gazing with all her eyes.

This then was Mr. Romaine, the eccentric, the gifted Mr. Romaine, of whose career vague rumors had reached the quiet Virginia country neighborhood which he had left so long ago. Far back in the dark ages, about 1835, when Colonel Corbin had made a memorable trip in a sailing-vessel to Europe, Mr. Romaine had been an attaché of the American legation in London; he had resigned that appointment, but he seemed to have taken a disgust to his native country, and had never returned to it. And Letty had a dim impression of having heard that Miss Jemima in her youth had had a slight weakness for the handsome Romaine. But it was so far in the distant past as to be quite shadowy. There was a superstition afloat that Mr. Romaine had made an enormous fortune in some way, and his conduct about Shrewsbury certainly indicated it. The place had been farmed on shares for a generation back, and the profits paid the taxes, and no more. But the house, which was a fine old mansion, had never been suffered to fall into decay, and was kept in a state of repair little short of marvelous in Virginia. Nobody was permitted to live in it, and at intervals of ten years the report would be started that Mr. Romaine intended returning to Shrewsbury. But nothing of the sort had been said for a long time now, and meanwhile Mr. Romaine was on the American side, and nobody in his native county had heard a word of it.

“And Miss Jemima Corbin,” said Mr. Romaine, a faint smile wrinkling the fine lines about his mouth. “When I knew her she was a very pretty young lady; there have been a great many pretty young ladies in the Corbin family,” he added, with old-fashioned gallantry.

“Aunt Jemima is still Miss Corbin,” answered Letty, also smiling. “She never could find a man so good as my grandfather, ‘brother Archibald,’ as she calls him, and so she would not have any at all.”

“May I ask if your grandfather is here with you? and is he enjoying good health?”

“Yes, he is now in the Casino—I don’t know exactly where, but he will soon come for me.”

This reawakening of his early life was not without its effect on Mr. Romaine, nor was it a wholly pleasant one. For time and Mr. Romaine were mortal enemies. His face flushed slightly, and he sat down on a garden chair by Letty, and the next moment Colonel Corbin was seen advancing upon them. The Colonel wore gaiters of an ancient pattern; they were some he had before the war. His new frock-coat was tightly buttoned over his tall, spare figure, and on his head was a broad palmetto hat. In an instant the two old men recognized each other and grasped hands. They had been boy friends, and in spite of the awful stretch of time which had separated them, and the total lack of communication between them, each turned back with emotion to their early associations together.

Then the Colonel was presented to the two ladies, who seemed to think that there was a vast and unnecessary amount of introducing going on, and the younger people formed a group to themselves. Letty and Miss Maywood fell to talking, and Letty asked the inevitable question:

“How do you like America?”

“Quite well,” answered Miss Maywood, in her rich, clear English voice. “Of course the climate is hard on us; these heats are almost insufferable. But it is very interesting and picturesque, and all that sort of thing. Mr. Romaine tells us the autumn in Virginia, where he is to take us to his old place, is beautiful.”

“Mr. Romaine’s place and our place, Corbin Hall, are not far apart,” said Letty, and at once Miss Maywood felt a new interest in her.

“Pray tell me about it,” she said. “Is it a hunting country?”

“For men,” answered Letty. “But I never knew of women following the hounds. We sometimes go out on horseback to see the hunt, but we don’t really follow the hounds.”

“But there is good hunting, I fancy,” cried Miss Maywood with animation. “Mr. Romaine has promised me that, and I like a good stiff country, such as he tells me it is. I have hunted for four seasons in Yorkshire, but now that Gladys has married in London, she has invited me to be with her for six months in the year, and although I hate London, I love Gladys, and it’s a great saving, too. But it puts a stop to my hunting.”

Letty noticed that not only did Miss Maywood use Mr. Romaine’s name very often, but she glanced at him continually. He sat quite close to the Colonel, listening with a half smile to Colonel Corbin’s sounding periods, describing the effects of the war and the present status of things in Virginia. His extraordinarily expressive black eyes supplied comment without words.

“I am very glad you are coming to the county,” said Letty, after a moment, “and I hope you’ll like Newport, too. At first I didn’t like it, but afterward, I met the Farebrothers”—she spoke in a low voice, and indicated Farebrother with a glance—“and they have been very kind to me, and I have had a very good time. We intended to go home next week. Newport’s a very expensive place,” she added, with a frank little smile. “But now, we—that is, my grandfather and my aunt and myself—intend staying a little longer.”

“Everything in America is expensive,” cried Miss Maywood, with energy. “I can’t imagine how Mr. Romaine can pay our bills; they are so enormous. Reginald—Mr. Chessingham—is his doctor, you know, and Mr. Romaine won’t let Reggie leave him, and Reggie wouldn’t leave Gladys, and Gladys wouldn’t leave me, and so, here we are. It is the one good thing about Reggie’s profession. I hate doctors, don’t you?”

“Why?” asked Letty, in surprise.

“Because,” said Miss Maywood, positively, “it’s so unpleasant to have people saying, ‘What a pity—there is that sweet, pretty Gladys Maywood married to a medical man’—he isn’t even a doctor—and Gladys cannot go to Court, you know, and it has really made a great difference in her position in London. Papa was an army man, and we were presented when we came out; but society has come to an end as far as poor Gladys is concerned. And although Reggie is a dear fellow, and I love him, I do wish he wasn’t associated with plasters and pills and that sort of thing.”

All this was thoroughly puzzling to Letty, but she had realized since she came to Newport that there was a great, big, wide world, with which she was totally unfamiliar, outside of Corbin Hall and its neighborhood. She knew she was a stranger to the thoughts and feelings of the people who lived in this outer world. She glanced at “Reggie”—he had a strong, sensible face, and she could imagine that Mr. Romaine might well find help in him.

“Is Mr. Romaine very, very ill?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” replied Miss Maywood, smiling. “He’s a very interesting man, rich, and has an excellent position in England. He doesn’t do a great deal, but he always has strength enough to travel. I think, occasionally, perhaps, he is only hipped, but it would not do to say generally. Sometimes he talks about dying, and sometimes he talks about getting married.”

“Who would marry him, though?” asked Letty, innocently.

“Who wouldn’t marry him?” replied Miss Maywood, calmly. “There was a French woman a few years ago—” She stopped suddenly, remembering that she knew very little about this French woman, a widow of good family but small means. There had been a subdued hurricane of talk, and she remembered hearing that at the time wagers had been made as to whether the French woman would score or not. But Mr. Romaine had apparently outwitted Madame de Fonblanque,—that was her name,—and since the Chessinghams had been with him, nothing had been seen or heard of the French widow. So Miss Maywood merely said in her gentle, even way, “I grant you, he isn’t young, and his health is not good, but his manners and his money are above reproach, and so is his position.” Miss Maywood mentally added to this last qualification—“for an American.”

“Marrying for manners, money, and position doesn’t strike me as quite a nice thing to do,” said Letty, stoutly.

Miss Maywood simply glanced at her, but the look said as plainly as words, “What a fool to suppose anybody would believe you.”

But what she actually said was, with a little laugh, “That’s very nice to say, but marriage without those things is out of the question, and the possession of them marks the difference between a possible man and an impossible man.”

This short discussion had brought the two young women to a mutual contempt of one another, although each was too well bred to show it. Just then there was a slight diversion in the group, and Letty gravitated toward Sir Archy. It was then his turn instead of Farebrother’s to receive assurances of Miss Corbin’s distinguished consideration.

“Where have you been all the morning?” she asked, with her sweetest wheedling. “I’ve been looking out for you a whole hour.”

Farebrother was then engaged with Mrs. Chessingham and Miss Maywood, and did not hear this colossal fib, which would not have ranked as a fib at all in Letty’s birthplace. But Miss Maywood heard it with a thrill of disgust. Not so Sir Archy. He had found out by that time that the typical American girl—not the sham English one, which sometimes is evolved from an American seedling—is prone to say flattering things to men, which cannot always be taken at their face value. Nevertheless, he liked the process, and showed his white teeth in a pleasant smile.

“And,” continued Letty, with determined cajolery, “you really must not treat me with the utter neglect you’ve shown me for the last ten days.”

“Neglect, by Jove,” said Sir Archy, laughing. “It seems to me that the neglect you complain of keeps me on the go from morning till night. When I am not doing errands for you I am reading up on subjects that I have never thought essential to a polite education before, but which you seem to think anybody but a Patagonian would know.”

Nothing escaped Miss Maywood’s ears. “The brazen thing,” she thought indignantly to herself. “Pretending that she wouldn’t marry for money and position and now simply throwing herself at Sir Archy’s head.”

Letty, however, was altogether unconscious of this, and went on with happy indifference.

“I found your knowledge of the American Constitution perfectly rudimentary, and of course I could not condescend to talk to any man ignorant of the first principles of our government, and you ought to go down on your knees and thank me for putting you in the way of enlightenment.”

Every word Letty uttered startled Miss Maywood more and more. It was bad enough to see Sir Archy swallowing the huge lumps of flattery that Miss America so calmly administered, but to see him take mildly a hectoring and overbearing attack upon the one subject—public affairs—on which a man is supposed to be most superior to woman was simply paralyzing. Miss Maywood turned, fully expecting to see Sir Archy walk off in high dudgeon. Instead of that he was laughing at Letty, his fine, ruddy face showing a boyish dimple as he smiled.

Then there was a move toward the Casino. Somebody had proposed luncheon. Colonel Corbin and Mr. Romaine got up from their seats and joined the younger people. The Colonel, with a flourish of his hand, remarked to Mrs. Chessingham, “You have witnessed, madam, the meeting of two old men who have not seen each other in more than forty years. A very gratifying meeting, madam; for although all retrospection has its pain, it has also its pleasure.”

This allusion to himself as an old man evidently did not enrapture Mr. Romaine. His eyes contracted and he scowled unmistakably, while the Colonel, with a bland smile, fondly imagined that he had said the very thing calculated to please. Farebrother took the lead, and the party was soon seated at a round table, close to a window that looked out upon the gay lawns and tennis grounds. Then Letty had a chance to study Mr. and Mrs. Chessingham and Mr. Romaine a little more closely.

Mr. Chessingham was unmistakably prepossessing. He had in abundance the vitality, the steadiness of nerve, the quiet reserve strength most lacking in Mr. Romaine. There was a healthy personal magnetism about the young doctor which accounted for Mr. Romaine’s willingness to saddle himself with all of Chessingham’s impedimenta. Mrs. Chessingham, although as like Miss Maywood as two peas, yet had something much more soft and winning about her. She was, it is true, strictly conventional, and had the typical English woman’s respect for rank and money and matrimony, but marriage had plainly done much for her. She might grieve that “Reggie” could not go to Court, but she did full justice to Reggie as a man and a doctor.

Miss Maywood sat next Mr. Romaine, and agreed scrupulously with everything he said. This peculiarity of hers seemed to inspire the old gentleman with the determination to make a spectacle of her, and he advanced some of the most grotesque and alarming fallacies imaginable, to which Miss Maywood gave a facile assent.

“It is my belief,” he said, quite gravely, at last, in consequence of an allusion to the Franco-Prussian war, “that had the Communists succeeded in keeping possession of Paris a month longer, we should have seen the German army trooping out of France, and glad to get away at any price. Had the Communists’ intelligent use of petroleum been made available against the Prussians, who knows what the result might have been? I have always thought the few disorders they committed very much exaggerated, and their final overthrow a misfortune for France.”

“Great heavens!” exclaimed Colonel Corbin, falling back in his chair; but finding nothing else to say, he poured out a glass of Apollinaris and gulped it down in portentous silence.

“No doubt you are right,” said Miss Maywood, turning her fresh, handsome face on Mr. Romaine. “One never can get at the truth of these things. The Communists were beaten, and so they were wrong.”

There was a slight pause, during which Sir Archy and Farebrother exchanged sympathetic grins; they saw how the land lay, and then Letty spoke up calmly.

“I can’t agree with Mr. Romaine,” she said in her clear voice. “I think the Communists were the most frightful wretches that ever drew breath. To think of their murdering that brave old archbishop.”

“Political necessity, my dear young lady,” murmured Mr. Romaine. “M. Darboy brought his fate on himself.”

“However,” retorted Letty with a gay smile, “it is just possible that you may be guying us. The fact is, Mr. Romaine, your eyes are too expressive, and when you uttered those terrific sentiments, I saw that you were simply setting a trap for us, as deep as a well and as wide as a church door. But we won’t walk in it to please you.”

Miss Maywood colored quickly. It never had occurred to her literal mind before that Mr. Romaine did not mean every word he said, and if she had thought to the contrary, she would not have dared to say it. She fully expected an outbreak of the temper which Mr. Romaine was known to possess, but instead, as with Sir Archy, Letty’s daring onslaught produced only a smile. Mr. Romaine was well pleased at the notion that he was not too old to be chaffed.

“You are much too acute,” he said, with a sort of silent laughter.

“Just what I have always told Miss Corbin,” remarked Farebrother, energetically. “If you will join me, perhaps we can organize a society for the suppression of clever women, and then we sha’n’t be at their mercy as we now are.”

“And don’t forget a clause guaranteeing that they shall be deprived of all opportunities of a higher education,” suggested Sir Archy, who had learned by that time to forward any joke on hand.

“That would be unnecessary,” said Mr. Romaine. “The higher education does them no harm at all, and gives them much innocent pride and pleasure.”

As the luncheon progressed Miss Letty became more and more in doubt whether she liked Mr. Romaine or not. She regarded him as being somewhere in the neighborhood of ninety-five, and wished to feel the respect for him she ought to feel for all decent graybeards. But Mr. Romaine was as fully determined not to be thought old as Letty was determined to think that he was old. He was certainly unlike any old man that she had ever met; not that there was anything in the least ridiculous about him,—he was much too astute to affect juvenility,—but there was an alertness in his wonderful black eyes and a keenness in his soft speech that was far removed from old age. And he was easily master of everybody at the table, excepting Farebrother and Letty. With feminine intuition Letty felt Mr. Romaine’s power, and knew that had Mr. Chessingham been the old man and Mr. Romaine the young doctor, Mr. Romaine would still have been in the ascendant. The Colonel, with well meant but cruel persistence, tried to get Mr. Romaine into a reminiscent mood, but in vain. Mr. Romaine utterly ignored the “forty years ago, my dear Romaine,” with which Colonel Corbin began many stories that never came to a climax, and he positively declined to discuss anything that had happened more than twenty years before. In fact this peculiarity was so marked that Letty strongly suspected that the old gentleman’s memory had been rigidly sawed off at a certain period, as a surgeon cuts off a leg at the knee-joint.

The Chessinghams evidently enjoyed themselves, and the utmost cordiality prevailed, except between the two girls, who eyed each other very much as the gladiators might have done when in the arena for the fray. Still they were perfectly polite, and showed a truly feminine capacity for pretty hypocrisy. Nevertheless, when the luncheon was over and the party separated, Miss Maywood and Miss Corbin parted with cordial sentiments of mutual disesteem. Scarcely were the two sisters alone at the hotel, before Miss Maywood burst forth with, “Well, Gladys, I suppose you see what the typical American girl is! Did you ever hear anything equal to Miss Corbin’s language to Mr. Romaine and Sir Archy? Actually rating them! And then the next moment plying them with the most outrageous flattery.”

“And yet, Ethel, she seemed to please them,” answered Mrs. Chessingham, doubtfully. “But I was a little scandalized, I admit.”

“A little scandalized! Now, I do assure you, leaving out of account altogether any personal grievance about these two particular men, I never heard a girl talk so to men in all my life.”

Ethel told the truth this time and no mistake.

“Nor did I,” said Mrs. Chessingham. “But perhaps she’s not a fair type.”

“Didn’t Sir Archy tell us she was the most typical American that he has yet seen? And doesn’t Mr. Romaine know all about her family? And really,” continued Miss Maywood, getting off her high horse, and looking genuinely puzzled, “I scarcely know whether it would be right for me to make a companion of such a girl; you know her home is in the same county as Mr. Romaine’s place, quite near, I fancy—and we have been so carefully brought up by dear mama, and so often warned against associating with reckless girls, that I am not quite sure that we ought to know her when we go to Virginia.”

Here Mrs. Chessingham’s confidence in Reggie came to her help.

“Now don’t say that, Ethel dear. Reggie thinks her a charming girl, and you saw for yourself nobody seemed to take her seriously except ourselves, so the best thing for you to do is to go on quietly and be guided by circumstances.”

“But the way she made eyes!” said Miss Maywood, disgustedly. “It’s perfectly plain she means to marry either Mr. Romaine or Sir Archy—she advertises the fact so plainly that she’ll probably overshoot the mark. At all events, I shall be on my guard, and unless I am much mistaken, you will find that we can’t afford to know her.”

Meanwhile Letty, in the little sitting-room of their lodgings, was haranguing Colonel Corbin and Miss Jemima upon Miss Maywood’s iniquities.

“The most brazen piece, Aunt Jemima, actually saying that any girl would marry that old pachyderm, Mr. Romaine! I wouldn’t marry him if he was padded an inch thick with thousand-dollar bills! But she as good as said she would—and the way he poked fun at her! She agrees with everything he says, and she is making such a dead set at him that she can’t see the old gentleman’s game. I am perfectly disgusted with her.”

At the first mention of Mr. Romaine’s name, a faint color came into Miss Jemima’s gentle, withered face.

“Don’t speak of him that way, Letty dear,” she said. “He was a charming man once. But, perhaps, my love, it would be more prudent for you to avoid Miss Maywood. Nothing is more dangerous to young girls than association with others who lack modesty and refinement, as you represent this young lady.”

“I’ll think over it,” answered the prudent Letty, who at that moment remembered that they were all going to the country, which is dull for young people at best, and a new neighbor is a distinct godsend not to be trifled with. But in her heart she had grave doubts of Miss Maywood’s propriety.

IV

IT might be supposed that the modest sum of money, which seemed like a million to Colonel Corbin, would have been used in paying off some of the incumbrances on Corbin Hall, or at least in refitting some part of it. A few hundreds might have been spent very judiciously in stopping up the chinks and crannies of the house, in replacing the worn carpets and having the rickety old furniture mended. But far were such thoughts from the Colonel, Miss Jemima, or Letty. Money was a rare and unfamiliar commodity to all of them, and when they got any of it they wisely spent it in pleasuring. New carpets and sound furniture were not in the least essential to these simple folk, and would have altogether spoiled the harmony of the comfortable shabbiness that prevailed at Corbin Hall. So the Colonel proposed to stop a month or two in New York in order to disburden themselves of this inconvenient amount of cash. Farebrother found out involuntarily, as indeed everybody else did, the state of affairs, and he took positive delight in the simplicity and primitiveness of these sweet and excellent people, to whom the majesty of the dollar was so utterly unknown.

So admirably had Mr. Romaine got on with the Corbin party, in spite of the Colonel’s continual efforts to remind him of the time when they were boys together, that he announced his intention, one night, upon a visit to the little sitting-room appropriated to the Chessinghams, of going to New York the same time the Corbins did, and staying at the same old-fashioned but aristocratic hotel. The two young women were sitting under the drop-light, each with the inevitable piece of fancy work in her hand that is so necessary to the complete existence of an English woman. Mrs. Chessingham glanced at Ethel, whose fine, white skin grew a little pale.

Mr. Romaine sat watching her with something like a malicious smile upon his delicate, high-bred old face. He did not often bestow his company upon his suite, as Letty wickedly called his party. He traveled in extravagant luxury, and what with his own room, his sitting-room and his valet’s room, and the apartments furnished the Chessinghams and Miss Maywood, it really did seem a marvel sometimes, as Ethel Maywood said, how anybody could pay such bills. But he did pay them, promptly and ungrudgingly. Nobody—not Chessingham himself—knew how Mr. Romaine’s money came or how much he had. Nor did Mr. Romaine’s relatives, of whom he had large tribes and clans in Virginia, know any more on this interesting subject. They would all have liked to know, not only where it came from, but where it was going to. Not the slightest hint, however, had been got from Mr. Romaine during his forty years’ sojourn on the other side. Nor did his unlooked-for return to his native land incline him any more to confidences about his finances. There was a cheque-book always at hand, and Mr. Romaine paid his score with a lofty indifference to detail that was delightful to women’s souls, particularly to Mrs. Chessingham and Miss Maywood. Both of them were scrupulously honest women, and not disposed in the slightest degree to impose upon him. But if he found out by accident that they had walked when they might have driven, or had paid for the carriage themselves, or had in any way paid a bill that might have been charged to him, he always chided them gently, and declared that if it happened again all would be over between Chessingham and himself. This charming peculiarity had caused Ethel to say very often to her sister:

“Although one would much rather marry an Englishman than an American, I don’t believe any Englishman alive would be so indulgent to a woman as Mr. Romaine would be. I have never known any married woman made so free of her husband’s money as we are with Mr. Romaine’s, and if he does offer himself, I am sure he will make most unheard-of settlements.”

But when Mr. Romaine, sitting back in a dark velvet chair which showed off his face, clear cut as a cameo, with his superb black eyes shining full of meaning, spoke of the New York trip, Ethel began to think that there was no longer any hope of that offer. She remained silent, but Mrs. Chessingham, with a pitying glance at her sister, said resignedly, “It will be very pleasant, no doubt. The glimpse we had of New York when we landed was scarcely enough for so large a place.”

“It is quite a large place,” answered Mr. Romaine, gravely. “How large should you take it to be?” he asked Miss Maywood.

“About two or three hundred thousand,” replied Ethel, dubiously.

“There are four million people within a radius of ten miles of New York’s City Hall. Good-night,” said Mr. Romaine, with much suavity, rising and going.

When he was out of the door Mrs. Chessingham spoke up promptly: “What a story! I don’t believe a word of it.”

“Of course it isn’t true,” complained Ethel, “but that is the worst of Americans—you never can tell when they are joking and when they aren’t. As for Miss Corbin, I simply can’t understand her at all. However, this move of Mr. Romaine’s settles one thing. Miss Corbin will be Mrs. Romaine, mark my words.”

“Reggie says that there is positively nothing in it; that Mr. Romaine likes her, and is amused by her. She is amusing.”

“Yes, I know she is,” replied Ethel, ruefully, with something like tears in her voice at the admission.

“And he says that she wouldn’t marry Mr. Romaine to save his life—and that he has heard her laugh at the idea.”

“That only shows, Gladys dear, how blind Reggie is, like the rest of his sex. Of course Miss Corbin protests that she doesn’t want Mr. Romaine. She did the equivalent to it the very first talk we ever had together, that day at the Casino. But I didn’t believe her, and what shocked me was her want of candor. The notion of a girl who doesn’t want money and position is entirely too great a strain on my credulity. I suppose she’ll say next that she doesn’t want to be Lady Corbin and live at Fox Court. I think it’s much better to be truthful about things.”

“So do I, dear. But my own belief is that she really likes Mr. Farebrother best of all.”

“Nonsense,” cried Ethel, sharply. “Mr. Farebrother couldn’t begin to give her Sir Archy’s position or Mr. Romaine’s money. He’s an architect, with about enough to live on after his father’s fortune is cut up into six or seven parts. Not that I pretend to despise Mr. Farebrother; I am truthful in all things, and I think he’s a very presentable, pleasant man, and would be a good match. But to suppose that any girl in her senses would take him in preference to Mr. Romaine or Sir Archibald Corbin is too wildly grotesque for anything. I’ll follow Mr. Romaine’s example and say good-night.” And off she went.

Sir Archy had begun to find Newport pleasanter day by day. He had wearied in the beginning of the adulation paid to his title and his money, and it soon came to be understood that he was not in the market, so to speak. He found the Farebrother girls pleasant and amiable, and showed them some attention. As he showed none whatever to any other of the cottage girls, nor did he go to any except to the Farebrothers’ villa, the family were credited with having laid a deep scheme to monopolize him. The real state of the case was too simple to be understood by artificial people.

Then he had an agreeable sense of familiarity with Mrs. Chessingham and Miss Maywood. They were really well bred and well educated English gentlewomen. Ethel’s aloneness had perhaps developed rather too sharply her aspirations toward an establishment of her own, but that is a not uncommon thing among women, and the terrible English frankness brings it to the front without any disguises whatever. Sir Archy, though, knew how to take care of himself among his own countrywomen, as Englishmen do. But he was like clay in the hands of the potter where his American cousin, as he persisted in calling Letty Corbin, was concerned.

Whether Letty was extravagantly fond of him or utterly detested him he could not for the life of him discern. He did discover unmistakably, though, that she was a very charming girl. Her frankness, so different from Ethel Maywood’s frankness, was perfectly bewitching. She acknowledged with the utmost candor her fondness for admiration,—her willingness to swallow not only the bait of flattery, but the hook, bob, sinker, and all,—and calmly related the details of her various forms of coquetry. Thus she possessed the charm of both art and simplicity, but, as the case is with her genus, when she fancied she was artful she was very simple, and when she meant to be very simple she was extremely artful.

But she was a delightful and never ending puzzle to Sir Archy. He was manly, clever, and modest, but deep down in his heart was fixed that ineradicable masculine delusion that he was, after all, a very desirable fellow for any girl; and his money and his title had always been treated as such outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual grace, that he would have been more or less than human if he had not been sanguine of success if ever he really put his mind to winning any girl. But Letty was a conundrum to him of the sort that it is said drove old Homer to suicide because he could not solve it.

Farebrother, however, understood Letty and Sir Archy and the Romaine party perfectly, and the little comedy played before his eyes had a profound interest for him. When he heard of Mr. Romaine’s decision to go to New York and stay at the same hotel with the Corbins, he chuckled and shrewdly suspected that Mr. Romaine had in mind more Miss Maywood’s discomfiture than Miss Corbin’s satisfaction. He chuckled more than ever when, on the evening he went to see the Corbins off on the boat, he found the Romaine party likewise established on deck with Mr. Romaine’s valet and Mrs. Chessingham’s maid superintending the transfer of a van-load of trunks to the steamer.

They were all sitting together on the upper deck when Farebrother appeared. He carried three bouquets exactly alike, which he handed respectively to Mrs. Chessingham, Miss Maywood, and Letty. Miss Maywood colored beautifully under the thin gray veil drawn over her handsome, aquiline features. Mrs. Chessingham smiled prettily, but Letty’s face was a study. A thunder-cloud would have been more amiable. Farebrother, however, was not in the least disconcerted, but went over to her and smiled at her in a very exasperating manner.

“So kind of you to give us all bouquets alike,” began Letty, scornfully.

Meanwhile, in order to keep her chagrin from being obvious to Ethel and Mrs. Chessingham, who would by no means have understood her particularity about attentions, she was cuddling the bouquet as if it were a real treasure.

“I suppose your feeble intelligence was not equal to inventing three separate bouquets for one occasion,” she continued, frowning at the offender.

“Yes, it was,” answered Farebrother, stoutly. “I knew though that it would thoroughly exasperate you, so I did it on purpose.”

At this candid defiance Letty’s scowl dissolved into a smile.

“I like your childlike innocence,” she remarked, “and the way you avow your dishonest motives. And I like a man who is a match for me. I was going to give the wretched nosegay to the stewardess, but now I’ll keep it as a souvenir of your delightful impertinence.”

“Thank you,” responded Farebrother politely. There was still half an hour before the boat started, and all three of the young women felt a degree of secret anxiety as to whether Sir Archy Corbin would be on hand to bid them good-by. He had spoken vaguely of seeing them again, and had accepted Colonel Corbin’s elaborate invitation to make a visit at Corbin Hall, but whether he would depart far enough from his British caution in dealing with marriageable young women to see them off on the boat, was highly uncertain.

Miss Maywood, being an eminently reasonable girl, did not fix her hopes too high, and thought that to be Lady Corbin was too good to be true. Yet it was undeniable that he seemed to like her, and in this extraordinary country, where, according to her ideas, there was a scandalous laxity regarding the value of attentions, Sir Archy might fall into the prevailing ways. So she kept her weather eye open, in spite of the presence of Mr. Romaine, who sat a little distance off slyly watching the bouquet episode and Farebrother.

Letty considered Mr. Romaine merely in the light of an interesting fossil, but she felt a characteristic desire to monopolize Farebrother. Besides, at the bottom of her heart was a genuine admiration for him, and she felt a sentimental tenderness at the parting which she fully expected him to share. But Farebrother was irritatingly unresponsive. He divided his attentions among the three women with what was to Letty the most infuriating impartiality. Nor did he show the downcast spirits which she fully expected, and altogether his behavior was inexplicable and unsatisfactory.

Letty, however, determined, as the severest punishment she could inflict, to be very debonair with him, and when at last he seated himself in the camp chair next hers, she began upon a flippant subject which she thought would let Farebrother see that the parting was as little to her as to him.

“When I get to New York I shall have some money of my own to spend, and I have been wondering what I shall do with it,” she said, gravely.

“I am glad to see you appreciate your responsibilities,” answered Farebrother.

“Now I know you are making fun of me,” said Letty, calmly. “But I don’t mind. In the first place, I would like to buy two stained glass windows for the church which you miserable Yankees wrecked during the war. Have you any idea of the price of stained glass windows?”

“I think they run from fifteen dollars up to twenty or thirty thousand.”

“I shouldn’t get a thirty thousand dollar one, at all events. Then I must have a complete new riding outfit for myself. This comes of going to Newport. Before that I thought my riding-skirt, saddle, and bridle quite good enough, but now I yearn for a tailor made habit and all the etceteras. How much do you think that will cost? However, it’s not worth while to ask you, for you wouldn’t be likely to know. And if you knew, you wouldn’t tell me the truth.”

“Again—thanks.”

“And of course I want some clothes—swell gowns like those I saw at Newport. And my mother’s watch is past repairing any more, and my piano is on its last legs, and I promised to bring dear Mrs. Cary, our next neighbor, an easy-chair for a present, and of course I shall have to carry Dad Davy and all the other servants something nice, and I must make a little gift to Aunt Jemima, and, and—I’m afraid my money won’t hold out.”

“Don’t give up,” said Farebrother, encouragingly. “Leave out the swell gowns, and the watch, and the piano, and the riding habit, and I daresay you’ll have enough left for the rest.”

“What do you take me for? To get nothing for myself? Please understand I am not so foolish as I look. But, perhaps, after all, I won’t buy any of those things, and I will lay it all out in a pair of pearl bracelets to match my mother’s necklace, and trust to luck to get another windfall at some time during my sojourn in this vale of tears.”

But Farebrother, who professed to be deeply interested in this scheme for squandering a fortune, would not let the subject drop. He drew Miss Maywood into the conversation, and although the two girls cordially disliked each other, they were too ladylike to show it, and they had in mind the prospect of spending some months in a lonely country neighborhood, when each might find the other a resource.

“I should think, dear,” said the literal Ethel, in her sweet, slow English voice, “that it would be impossible to buy half the things you are thinking of out of that much money, and everything is so ruinously dear in New York, I understand.”

“Oh,” answered Letty, airily, “it’s not the impossibility of the thing that puzzles me; it is the making up of my mind as to which one of the impossibilities I shall finally conclude to achieve.”

Miss Maywood thought this a very flippant way of talking, but all American girls were distressingly flippant, except the sham English ones that she met at Newport, who were distressingly serious. And then in a moment or two more a genuine sensation occurred. Sir Archy appeared, red but triumphant, followed by his man, and both of them loaded down with gun-cases, hat-boxes, fishing-reels, packing-cases, mackintoshes, sticks, umbrellas, traveling-rugs and pillows, guide-books and all the vast impedimenta with which an Englishman prepares for a twelve hours’ trip as if he were going to the antarctic circle.

Everybody was surprised to see him, and to see him in that guise. Mrs. Chessingham opened her eyes, the ever ready blood flew into Ethel’s fair face, while Letty uttered an exclamation of surprise.

“You here!” she cried.

“Yes,” sighed Sir Archy, beginning to pitch down his sticks, umbrellas and mackintoshes, while he heaped a whole cartload of other things upon the patient valet. “I made up my mind at the last moment that it would be deucedly dull without all of you, and here I am.”

Mr. Romaine, who had been sitting at a little distance, now advanced, his eyes gleaming with a Mephistophelian amusement. In traveling costume, his make-up was no less complete than in full evening dress. His perfectly fitting ulster was buttoned closely around his slight figure; his usual gray hat was replaced by a correct traveling-cap; his dog-skin gloves fitted without a wrinkle. He took in at once the sensation Sir Archy’s unexpected appearance would create in the feminine contingent of the party, and he wanted to be on hand to enjoy it.

“We are very pleased to have your company, Sir Archy,” he said, blandly, “and still more so if you intend patronizing the same hotel that we shall in New York.”

“Thank you,” answered Sir Archy, heartily. “I had intended to do so, having been recommended by Colonel Corbin.”

Just then the Colonel appeared.

“Why, my dear fellow,” he cried, in his rich, cordial voice. “This is truly gratifying. I thought when I bade you farewell this morning it was for a considerable period, until you paid us that promised visit at Corbin Hall,” for the Colonel had become completely reconciled to Sir Archy, and had generously overlooked his experiences during the war.

“Yes,” said Sir Archy, cheerfully, “I was afraid I’d be a horrid bore, following you all up this way, but I felt so dismal after I had told you good-by—swore so hard at Tompkins, and made a brute of myself generally—that at last I concluded I’d better pull up stakes and quit.”

“Nothing could have been more judicious, my young kinsman,” responded the Colonel, “and these ladies, I am sure, are the magnets that have drawn you to us.”

A Strange, Sad Comedy

A STRANGE, SAD COMEDY

I

II

III

IV