"No; not that. You are clearly not in need of sympathy. There! They are going to ring the supper-bell, and you must go and be introduced to my father, as his cousin. He is the dearest daddy in the world, and will be sure to try to make you come to visit us at the Hall."
"Am I to understand this is a hint not to accept?"
"I _could_ stay on here, you know," she said, in a businesslike way.
"You are perfectly exasperating," he exclaimed, and then the summons came to go into the house. Just before they crossed the threshold, she appeared to have undergone another change of mind. Turning back swiftly, in a voice of exceeding sweetness she breathed into his ear these words:
"Please, I am sorry. I ought not to keep forgetting, ought I, that you are a stranger within our gates, and a cousin, really?"
"Is she a coquette?" Vance began to ask himself, but was interrupted by a _sortie_ of his host in search of him.
Vance Townsend had reckoned without his host when he made the declaration that he would relieve Miss Carlyle of his presence the following day. The kind owner of Wheatlands, indulgent to every man and beast upon his premises, had yet a way of holding on to and controlling guests that none might resist.
Vance, however, did not try very hard to resist the invitation to stay at least until "Thursday, when the Carlyles would be running away home." An evening spent with the kind, simple, yet cultivated people who formed the little _coterie_ at Wheatlands (there was among them a widowed cousin with her unruly boy, and a cousin who had been unfortunate in his investments) had, somehow, quite upset our hero's notions upon many points.
Claggett, dismissed with a _douceur_, the liberality of which consoled that worthy countryman for an early reunion with the lady who would not allow him to tell stories of the war, took an affectionate leave of his employer. In his manner Vance detected more satisfaction in the vindication of Virginia customs than regret at the severance of their relation. The little triumph Claggett might readily have derived from the incident of the wayfarer's meeting, in spite of himself, with his relations was heroically suppressed. And before Townsend had turned upon his pillow the morning after his arrival, a telegram had gone to the town where his luggage had been left, ordering it to be sent by train that day.