For the Major Part 5

"I think they are," said the Major, turning the leaves. They looked at one or two together, recalling reminiscences of the days when she used to talk about them as a child. "You always insisted that this print of Friday's foot was not of the right shape, and once you even went out in the garden, took off your shoe and stocking, and made a print in a flower-bed to show me," said the Major, laughing.

"Let us look them all over after tea, and 'Good Queen Bertha' too," said Sara. "For Scar and I have come to take you out to tea, father; the dining-room is so dull without you. Besides, I want you to give me some peach preserves, and then say, 'No, Sara, not again,' when I ask for more; and then, after a few minutes, put a large table-spoonful on my plate with your head turned away, while talking to some one else, as though unconscious of what you were doing."

Scar laughed over this anecdote, and so did Scar's father. "But perhaps we shall have no peach preserve," he said, rising.

"We will ask mamma to give us some," answered Sara. She took his arm, and Scar took his other hand; thus together they entered the dining-room.

Madam Carroll welcomed them; but placidly, as though the Major's coming was a matter of course. Since his daughter's return, however, it had not been a matter of course: first for this reason, then for that, his meals had almost always been sent to the library. Now he was tired; and now the dining-room floor might be damp after Judith Inches'

scrubbing-brush; now there was an east wind, and now there was a west; or else he was not feeling well, and some one might "drop in," in which case, as the dining-room opened only into the hall, which was wide, like a room, he should not be able to escape. In actual fact, however, there was very little "dropping in" at Carroll Farms, unless one should give that name to the visits of the rector, Mr. Owen. Once in a while, in the evening, when the weather was decisively pleasant, the junior warden came to see them. But all their other acquaintances came to the receptions, made a brief call upon the first Thursday afternoon following, and that was all. The sweet little mistress of the mansion had never uttered one syllable upon the subject, yet each member of the circle of Far Edgerley society knew as well as though it had been proclaimed through the town by a herald with a silver trumpet emblazoned with the Carroll arms, that these bimonthly receptions (which were so delightful) and the brief following call comprised all the visits they were expected to pay at Carroll Farms. And surely, when one considered the great pleasure and also improvement derived from these receptions, the four visits a month at the Farms were worth more than forty times four visits at any other residence in the village or its neighborhood.

True, Mrs. Hibbard endeavored to maintain an appearance of importance at her mansion of yellow wood called Chapultepec; but as General Hibbard (of the Mexican War) had now been dead eight years, and as his old house had not been opened for so much as the afternoon sewing society since his departure, its importance, socially considered, existed only in the imagination of his relict--which was, however, in itself quite a domain.

Judith Inches, tall and serious, now brought back the hot dishes, Madam Carroll made the tea (with many pretty little motions and att.i.tudes, which her husband watched), and the meal began. The Major was in excellent spirits. He told stories of Sara's childhood, her obstinacy, her never-failing questions. "She came to me once, Scar," he said, "and announced that Galileo was a humbug. When I asked her why, she said that there was good King David, who knew all about astronomy long before he did; for didn't he say, 'the round world, and they that dwell therein'?

We sang it every Sunday. So that proved plain as day that David knew that the world was round, and that it moved, and all about it, of course. Yet here was this old Italian taking everything to himself! Just like Amerigo Vespucci, another old Italian, who had all America named after himself, leaving poor Columbus, the real discoverer, with nothing but 'Hail, Columbia!' to show for it. She announced all this triumphantly and at the top of her voice, from a window; for I was in the garden. When I told her that the word 'round,' upon which all her argument had been founded, was not in the original text, you should have seen how crest-fallen she was. She said she should never sing that chant again."

Scar laughed over this story. He did not laugh often, but when he did, it was a happy little sound, which made every one join in it by its merry glee.

"I am afraid I was a very self-conceited little girl, Scar," his sister said.

As the meal went on, the Major's manner grew all the time more easy. His eyes were no longer restless. His old attention returned, too, in a measure; he kept watch of his wife's plate to ask if she would not have something more; he remembered that Sara preferred bread to the beat biscuit, and placed it near her. The meal ended, they went back to the library. Sara found her old copy of "Good Queen Bertha's Honey-Broth,"

and she and her father looked at the pictures together, as well as at those of "Robinson Crusoe." Each had its a.s.sociation, a few recalled by him, but many more by her. After Scar had gone to bed, and the books had been laid aside, she still sat there talking to him. She talked of her life at Longfields, telling stories in connection with it--stories not long--bright and amusing. The Major's wife meanwhile sat near them, sewing; she sat with her back to the lamp, in order that the light might fall over her shoulder upon the seam. The light did the work she a.s.signed to it, but it also took the opportunity to play over her curls in all sorts of winsome ways, to gleam on her thimble, to glide down her rosy muslin skirt, and touch her little slipper. She said hardly anything; but, as they talked on, every now and then she looked up appreciatively, and smiled. At last she folded up her work, replacing it in her neat rose-lined work-basket; then she sat still in her low chair, with her feet on a footstool, listening.

The old clock, with its fierce gilt corsair climbing over a gla.s.s rock, struck ten.

"Bed-time," said Sara, pausing.

"Not for me," observed the Major. "My time for sleep is always brief; five or six hours are quite enough."

"I remember," said his daughter. And the memory, as a memory, was a true one. Until recently the Major's sleep had been as he described it. He had forgotten, or rather he had never been conscious of, the long nights of twelve or thirteen hours' rest which had now become a necessity to him.

"I am afraid I am not like you, father. I am very apt to be sleepy about ten," said Sara. "And I suspect it is the same with mamma."

Madam Carroll did not deny this a.s.sertion. The Major, laughing at the early somnolence of the two ladies, rose to light a candle for his daughter, in the old way. As she took it, and bent to kiss her stepmother good-night, Madam Carroll's eyes met hers, full of an expression which made them bright (ordinarily they were not bright, but soft); the expression was that of warm congratulation.

The next day dawned fair and cloudless--Trinity Sunday. The mountain breeze and the warm sun together made an atmosphere fit for a heaven. On the many knolls of Far Edgerley the tall gra.s.s, carrying with it the slender stalks of the b.u.t.tercups, was bending and waving merrily; the red clover, equally abundant, could not join in this dance, because it had crowded itself so greedily into the desirable fields that all that its close ranks could do was to undulate a little at the top, like a swell pa.s.sing over a pond. Madam Carroll, the Major, and Scar were to drive to church as usual, in the equipage. Sara had preferred to walk.

She started some time before the hour for service, having a fancy to stroll under the churchyard pines for a while by herself. These pines were n.o.ble trees; they had belonged to the primitive forest, and had been left standing along the northern border of the churchyard by the Carroll who had first given the land for the church a hundred years before. The ground beneath them was covered with a thick carpet of their own brown aromatic needles. There were no graves here save one, of an Indian chief, who slept by himself with his face towards the west, while all his white brethren on the other side turned their closed eyes towards the rising sun. It was a beautiful rural G.o.d's-acre, stretching round the church in the old-fas.h.i.+oned way, so that the shadow of the cross on the spire pa.s.sed slowly over all the graves, one by one, as the sun made his journey from the peak of Chillawa.s.see across to Lonely Mountain, behind whose long soft line he always sank, and generally in such a blaze of beautiful light that the children of the village grew up in the vague belief that the edge of the world must be just there, that there it rounded and went downward into a mysterious golden atmosphere, in which, some day, when they had wings, they, too, should sport and float like birds.

Early though it was, Miss Carroll discovered when she entered the church gate that she was not the first comer; the choir ladies were practising within, and other ladies of floral if not musical tastes were arranging mountain laurel in the font and chancel--to the manifest disapproval of Flower, the disapproval being expressed in the eye he had fixed upon them, his "mountain eye," as he called his best one. "It be swep, and it be dustered," he said to himself. "What more do the reasonless female creatures want?" Miss Carroll had not joined the choir, although the rector, prompted by his junior warden, had suggested it; Miss Sophia Greer would, therefore, continue to sing the solos undisturbed. She was trying one now. And the other ladies were talking. But this music, this conversation, this arrangement of laurel, and this disapproval of Flower went on within the church. The new-comer had the churchyard to herself; she went over to the pines on its northern side, and strolled to and fro at the edge of the slope, looking at the mountains, whose peaks rose like a grand amphitheatre all round her against the sky.

Her face was sad, but the bitterness, the revolt, were gone; her eyes were quiet and sweet. She had accepted her sorrow. It was a great one.

At first it had been overwhelming; for all the brightness of the past had depended upon her father, all her plans for the present, her hopes for the future. His help, his comprehension, his dear affection and interest, had made up all her life, and she did not know how to go on without them, how to live. Never again could she depend upon him for guidance, never again have the exquisite happiness of his perfect sympathy--for he had always understood her, and no one else ever had, or at least so she thought. She had cared only for him, she had found all her companions.h.i.+p in him; and now she was left alone.

But after a while Love rose, and turned back this tide. The sharp personal pain, the bitter loneliness, gave way to a new tenderness for the stricken man himself. Evidently he was at times partly conscious of this lethargy which was fettering more and more his mental powers, for he exerted himself, he tried to remember, he tried to be brighter, to talk in the old way. And who could tell but that he perceived his failure to accomplish this? Who could tell, when he was silent so often, sitting with his eyes on the carpet, that he was not brooding over it sadly? For a man such as he had been, this must be deep suffering--deep, even though vague--like the sensation of falling in a dream, falling from a height, and continuing to fall, without ever reaching bottom.

Probably he did not catch the full reality; it constantly eluded him; yet every now and then some power of his once fine mind might be awake long enough to make him conscious of a lack, a something that gave him pain, he knew not why. As she thought of this, all her heart went out to him with a loving, protecting tenderness which no words could express; she forgot her own grief in thinking of his, and her trouble took the form of a pa.s.sionate desire to make him happy; to keep even this dim consciousness always from him, if possible; to s.h.i.+eld him from contact with the thoughtless and unfeeling; to so surround his life with love, like a wall, that he should never again remember anything of his loss, never again feel that inarticulate pain, but be like one who has entered a beautiful, tranquil garden, to leave it no more.

This morning, under the pines, she was thinking of all this, as she walked slowly to and fro past the Indian's grave. Flower came out to ring his first bell. His "first bell" was unimportant, made up of short, business-like notes; he rang it in his working jacket, an old mountain homespun coat, whose swallow-tails had been cut off, so that it now existed as a roundabout. But when, twenty minutes later, he issued forth a second time, he was attired in a coat of thin but s.h.i.+ning black, with b.u.t.ternut trousers and a high pink calico vest. Placing his hat upon the ground beside him, he took the rope in his hand, made a solemn grimace or two to get his mouth into position, and then, closing his eyes, brought out with gravity the first stroke of his "second bell."

His second bell consisted of dignified solo notes, with long pauses between. Flower's theory was that each of these notes echoed resonantly through its following pause. But as the bell of St. John's was not one of size or resonance, he could only make the pauses for the echoes which should have been there.

As the first note of this second bell sounded from the elm, all the Episcopal doors of Far Edgerley opened almost simultaneously, and forth came the congregation, pacing with Sunday step down their respective front paths, opening their gates, and proceeding decorously towards St.

John's in groups of two or three, or a family party of father, mother, and children, the father a little in advance. They all arrived in good season, pa.s.sed the semi-unconscious Flower ringing his bell, and entered the church. Next, after an interval, came "clatter," "clatter:"

they knew that "the equipage" was coming up the hill. Then "clank,"

"clank:" the steps were down.

All now turned their heads, but only to the angle which was considered allowable--less than profile, about a quarter view of the face, with a side glance from one eye. To them, thus waiting, now entered their senior warden, freshly dressed, gloved, carrying his hat and his large prayer-book; and as he walked up the central aisle, a commanding figure, with n.o.ble head, gray hair, and military bearing, he was undoubtedly a remarkably handsome, distinguished-looking man.

Behind him, but not too near, came the small figures of Madam Carroll and Scar, the lady in a simple summer costume of lavender muslin, with many breezy little ruffles, and lavender ribbons on her gypsy hat, the delicate hues causing the junior warden to exclaim (afterwards) that she looked like "a hyacinth, sir; a veritable hyacinth!" Scar, in a black velvet jacket (she had made it for him out of an old cloak), carrying his little straw hat, held his mother's hand. The Major stopped at his pew, which was the first, near the chancel; he turned, and stood waiting ceremoniously for his wife to enter. She pa.s.sed in with Scar; he followed, and they took their seats. Then the congregation let its chin return to a normal straightness, the bell stopped, Alexander Mann (to use his own expression) "blew up," and Miss Millie began.

Miss Carroll came in a minute or two late. But there was no longer much curiosity about Miss Carroll. It was feared that she was "cold;" and it was known that she was "silent;" she had almost no "conversation." Now, Far Edgerley prided itself upon its conversation. It never spoke of its domestic affairs in company; light topics of elegant nature were then in order. Mrs. Greer, for instance, had Horace Walpole's Letters--which never failed. Other ladies preferred the cultivation of flowers, garden rock-work, and their bees (they allowed themselves to go as far as bees, because honey, though of course edible, was so delicate). Mrs.

Rendlesham, who was historical, had made quite a study of the characteristics of Archbishop Laud. And the Misses Farren were greatly interested in Egyptian ceramics. Senator Ashley, among many subjects, had also his favorite; he not infrequently turned his talent for talking loose upon the Crimean War. This was felt to be rather a modern topic.

But the junior warden was, on the whole, the most modern man they had.

Too modern, some persons thought.

CHAPTER IV.

July pa.s.sed, and August began. Sara Carroll had spent the weeks in trying to add to her father's comfort, and trying also to alter herself so fully, when with him, that she should no longer be a burden upon his expectation, a care upon his mind. In the first of these attempts she was and could be but an a.s.sistant, and a subordinate one, filling the interstices left by Madam Carroll. For the Major depended more and more each day upon his little wife. Her remarks always interested him, her voice he always liked to hear; he liked to know all she was doing, and where she went, and what people said to her; he liked to look at her; her bright little gowns and sunny curls pleased his eye, and made him feel young again, so he said. He had come, too, to have a great pride in her, and this pride had grown dear to him; it now made one of the important ingredients of his life. He liked to mention what a fine education she had had; he liked to say that her mother had been a "Forster of Forster's Island," and that her father was an Episcopal clergyman who had "received his education at Oxford." He thought little Scar had "English traits," and these he enumerated. He had always been a proud man, and now his pride had centred itself in her. But if his pride was strong, his affection was stronger; he was always content when she was in the room, and he never liked to have her long absent. When he was tired, she knew it; he was not obliged to explain. All his moods she comprehended; he was not obliged to define them. And when he did appear in public, at church on Sundays, or at her receptions, it was she upon whom he relied, who kept herself mentally as well as in person by his side, acting as quick-witted outrider, warding off possible annoyance, guiding the conversation towards the track he preferred, guarding his entrances and exits, so that above all and through all her other duties and occupations, his ease and his pleasure were always made secure.

Of all this his daughter became aware only by degrees. It went on so un.o.btrusively, invisibly almost, that only when she had begun to study the subject of her father's probable needs in connection with herself, what she could do to add to his comfort, only then did she comprehend the importance of these little hourly actions of Madam Carroll, comprehend what a safeguard they kept all the time round his tranquillity, how indispensable they were to his happiness. For the feeling he had had with regard to his daughter extended, though in a less degree, to all Far Edgerley society; he wished--and it was now his greatest wish--to appear at his best when any one saw him. And, thanks to the devotion and tact of his wife, to her watchfulness (which never seemed to watch), to the unceasing protection she had thrown round his seclusion, and the quiet but masterly support she gave when he did appear, no one in the village was as yet aware that any change had come to the Major, save a somewhat invalid condition, the result of his illness of the preceding winter.

Sara herself had now learned how much this opinion of the Far Edgerley public was to her father; he rested on Sat.u.r.day almost all day in order to prepare for Sunday, and the same preparation was made before each of the receptions. At these receptions she could now be of use; she could take Madam Carroll's place from time to time, stand beside him and keep other people down to his topics, prevent interruptions and sudden changes of subject, move with him through the rooms, as, with head erect and one hand in the breast of his coat, he pa.s.sed from group to group, having a few words with each, and so much in the old way that when at length he retired, excusing himself on account of his health, he left unbroken the impression which all Far Edgerley cherished, the impression of his distinguished appearance, charming conversation, and polished, delightful manners.

During these weeks, the more his daughter had studied him and the ways to make herself of use to him, even if not a pleasure, the greater had become her admiration for the little woman who was his wife--who did it all, and so thoroughly! who did it all, and so tenderly! What she, the daughter, with all her great love for him, could think out only with careful effort, the wife divined; what she did with too much earnestness, the wife did easily, lightly. Her own words when she was with him were considered, planned; but the wife's talk flowed on as naturally and brightly as though she had never given a thought to adapting it to him; yet always was it perfectly adapted. Sara often sat looking at Madam Carroll, during these days, with a wonder at her own long blindness; a wonder also that such a woman should have borne always in silence, and with unfailing gentleness, her step-daughter's moderate and somewhat patronizing estimate of her. But even while she was thinking of these things Madam Carroll would perhaps rise and cross the room, stopping to pat dog Carlo on the rug as she pa.s.sed, and she would seem so small and young, her very prettiness so unlike the countenance and expression one a.s.sociates with a strong character, that the daughter would unconsciously fall back into her old opinion of her, always, however, to emerge from it again hurriedly, remorsefully, almost reverentially, upon the next example of the exquisite tact, tenderness, and care with which she surrounded and propped up her husband's broken days.

But the Major's life was now very comfortable. His daughter, if she had not as yet succeeded in doing what she did without thought over it, had, at least, gradually succeeded in relieving him from all feeling of uneasiness in her society: she now came and went as freely as Scar. She had made her manner so completely unexpectant and (apparently) un.o.bservant, she had placed herself so entirely on a line with him as he was at present, that nothing led him to think of making an effort; he had forgotten that he had ever made one. She talked to him on local subjects, generally adding some little comment that amused him; she had items about the garden and fields or dog Carlo to tell him; but most of all she talked to him of the past, and led him to talk of it. For the Major had a much clearer remembrance of his boyhood and youth than he had of the events of later years, and not only a clearer remembrance, but a greater interest; he liked to relate his adventures of those days, and often did it with spirit and zest. He was willing now to have her present at "Scar's lessons;" she formed sentences in her turn from the chivalrous little ma.n.u.script book, and took part in the game of dominoes that followed. The Major grew into the habit also of taking an afternoon walk with her about the grounds--always at a safe distance from the entrance gate. They went to visit the birds' nests she had discovered, and count the eggs or fledglings, and he recalled his boyhood knowledge of birds, which was clear and accurate; they went down to the pond made by the brook, and sent in dog Carlo for a bath; they strolled through the orchard to see how the apples were coming on, and sat for a while on a bench under the patriarch tree. These walks became very precious to the daughter; her father enjoyed them, enjoyed so much the summer atmosphere, pure and fresh and high, yet aromatic also with the scents from the miles of unbroken pine and fir forest round about, enjoyed so much looking at the mountains, noting the moving bands of light and shadow cast upon their purple sides as the white clouds sailed slowly across the sky, that sometimes for an hour at a time he would almost be his former self again. He knew this when it happened, and it made him happy. And Sara was so glad to see him happy that she began to feel, and with surprise, as if she herself too might be really happy again, happy after all.

This first little beginning of happiness grew and budded like a flower; for now more and more her father asked for her, wanted her with him; he took her arm as they walked about the grounds, and she felt as glad and proud as a child because she was tall enough and strong enough to be of real use to him. She remembered the desolation of those hours when she had thought that she should never be of use to him again, should have no place beside him, should be to him only a care and a dread; thinking of this, she was very thankfully happy. When she could do something for him, and he was pleased, it seemed to her almost as if she had never loved him so much; for, added to her old strong affection, there was now that deep and sacred tenderness which fills the heart when the person one loves becomes dependent--trustingly dependent, like a little child--upon one's hourly thought and care.

The rector of St. John's had continued those visits which Miss Carroll had criticised as too frequent. When he came he seldom saw his senior warden; but the non-appearance was sufficiently excused by the state of the senior warden's health, as well as made up for by the presence of his wife. For Madam Carroll was charming in her manner to the young clergyman, always giving him the kind of welcome which made him feel sure that she was glad to see him, and that she wished him to come again. As he continued to come, it happened now and then that the mistress of the house would be engaged, and unable to see him. Perhaps she was reading to the Major from his _Sat.u.r.day Review_; and this was something which no one else could do in the way he liked. She alone knew how to select the items he cared to hear, and, what was more important, how to leave the rest unread; she alone knew how to give in a line an abstract that was clear to him, and how to enliven the whole with gay little remarks of her own, which, she said, he must allow her--a diversion for her smaller feminine mind. The Major greatly valued his _Sat.u.r.day Review_; he would have been much disturbed if deprived of the acquaintance it gave him with the events of the day. Not that he enjoyed listening to it; but when it was done and over for that week, he had the sensation of satisfaction in duty accomplished which a man feels who has faced an east wind for several hours without loss of optimism, and returned home with a double appreciation of his own pleasant library and bright fire. One's life should not be too personal, too easy; there should be a calm consideration of public events, a general knowledge of the outside world--though that outside world, tending as it did at present too much towards mere utilitarian interests, was not especially interesting; thus spoke the Major at the receptions (with that week's _Sat.u.r.day_ fresh in his memory), as he alluded briefly to the European news. For they never discussed American news at the receptions; they never came farther westward, conversationally, than longitude twenty-five, reckoned, of course, from Greenwich. In 1868 there was a good deal of this polite oblivion south of the Potomac and c.u.mberland.

When, therefore, Mr. Owen happened to call at a time when Madam Carroll was engaged, Miss Carroll was obliged to receive him. She did not dislike him (which was fortunate; she disliked so many people!), but she did not care to see him so often, she said. He talked well, she was aware of that; he had gone over the entire field of general subjects with the hope, as it seemed, of finding one in which she might be interested. But as she was interested in nothing but her father, and would not talk of him now, save conventionally, with any one, he found her rather unresponsive.

His congregation thought her, in addition, cold. Not a few of them had mentioned to him this opinion. But there was something in Sara Carroll's face which seemed to Owen the reverse of cold, though he could not deny that to him personally she was, if not precisely wintry, at least as neutral as a late October day, when there is neither sun to warm nor wind to vivify the gray, still air. Yet he continued to come to the Farms. His liking for the little mistress of the house was strong and sincere. He thought her very sweet and winning. He found there, too, an atmosphere in which he did not have to mount guard over himself and his possessions--an atmosphere of pleasant welcome and pleasant words, but both of them unaccompanied by what might have been called, perhaps, the acquisitiveness which prevailed elsewhere. No one at the Farms wanted him or anything that was his, that is, wanted it with any tenacity; his time, his thoughts, his opinions, his approval or disapproval, his ideas, his advice, his personal sympathy, his especial daily guidance, his mornings, his evenings, his afternoons, his favorite books, his sermons in ma.n.u.script--all these were considered his own property, and were not asked for in the large, low-ceilinged drawing-room where the Major's wife and daughter, one or both, received him when he came. They received him as an equal (Miss Carroll as a not especially important one), and not as a superior, a being from another world; though Madam Carroll always put enough respect for his rector's position into her manner to make him feel easy about himself and about coming again.

He continued to come again. And Miss Carroll continued her neutral manner. The only change, the only expression of feeling which he had seen in her in all these weeks, was one look in her eyes and a sentence or two she had uttered, brought out by something he said about her mother. During one of their first interviews he had spoken of this lady, expressing, respectfully, his great liking for her, his admiration.

Madame Carroll's daughter had responded briefly, and rather as though she thought it unnecessary for him to have an opinion, and more than unnecessary to express one. He had remembered this little pa.s.sage of arms, and had said no more. But having met the mistress of the house a few days before, at a cabin on the outskirts of the town, where a poor crippled boy had just breathed his last breath of pain, he had been much touched by the sweet, comprehending, sisterly tenderness of the mother who was a lady to the mother who was so ignorant, rough-spoken, almost rough-hearted as well. But, though rough-hearted, she had loved her poor child as dearly as that other mother loved her little Scar. The other mother had herself said this to him as they left the cabin together. He spoke of it to Sara when he made his next visit at the Farms; he could not help it.

And then a humility he had never seen there before came into her eyes, and a warmth of tone he had not heard before into her voice.

"My mother's goodness is simply unparalleled," she answered. "You admire her sincerely; many do. But no one save those who are in the house with her all the time can comprehend the one hundredth part of her unselfishness, her energy--which is always so quiet--her tenderness for others, her constant thought for them."

Frederick Owen was surprised at the pleasure these words gave him. For they gave him a great pleasure. He felt himself in a glow as she finished. He thought of this as he walked home. He knew that he admired Madame Carroll; and he was not without a very pleasant belief, too, that she had a respect for his opinion, and even an especial respect. Still, did he care so much to hear her praised?--care so much that it put him in a glow?

Towards the last of August occurred, on its regular day, one of Madame Carroll's receptions. To Sara Carroll it was an unusually disagreeable one. She had never been fond of the receptions at any time, though of late she had accepted them because they were so much to her father; but this particular one was odious.

It was odious on account of the presence of a stranger who had appeared in Far Edgerley three weeks before, a stranger who had made his way into society there with so much rapidity and success that he had now penetrated even the exclusive barriers of the Farms. But this phraseology was Miss Carroll's. In reality, the stranger's "way" had not been made by any effort of his own, but rather by his manners and appearance, which were original, and more especially by a gift for which nature was responsible, not himself. And as to "penetrating the barriers" of the Farms, he had not shown any especial interest in that old-fas.h.i.+oned mansion, and now that he was actually there, and at one of the receptions, too, he seemed not impressed by his good fortune, but wandered about rather restlessly, and yawned a good deal in corners.

These little ways of his, however, were considered to belong to the "fantasies of genius;" Madam Carroll herself had so characterized them.