The introductions follow. There is Prof. Freilgrath, quite different from their old, round, bald German teacher. He is tall and martial-looking, with a fine head, and hair on the auburn tint, a little curling and thin at the edge of the high forehead. His eyes are light blue, keen, good-humored, and he wears glasses; his nose is large, his mouth rather wide, but his teeth are perfect. His English has a very slight accent, and he impresses one with scholarly ways at once. Arthur Delancy, a very good-looking young man, seems rather insignificant beside him. Violet experiences a thrill of negative preference; she is glad it was not her fate to become Mrs. Delancy.
Some one invites them within.
"Oh, no," responds the professor. "Mrs. Grandon knows what is delightful; let us follow her example and sit here on the porch. You Americans are indoors quite too much. And I want to see the child, Mr. Grandon's pretty daughter."
"I must be excused then," declares Laura. "They may entertain you, Arthur, but I must see mamma and take off my bonnet."
The others seat themselves in the bamboo veranda chairs. Cecil is seized with a fit of shyness, which proves coaxable, however. Violet feels compelled, as sole lady, to be entertaining, and acquits herself so well that in a few moments her husband forgets his recent anxiety about her.
Laura follows her mother up-stairs.
"What did possess Floyd to make such an utter fool of himself?" she asks. "When you wrote, I was struck dumb! That little—ninny!"
"You have just hit it. A girl who still plays with dolls, and who learned nothing in a convent but to count beads and embroider trumpery lace," says the mother, contemptuously.
"And he might have had Madame Lepelletier! She has been such a success at Newport, and she will be just the envy of New York this winter! She is going to take a furnished house,—the Ascotts'. They are to spend the winter in Paris, and Mrs. Latimer says the house is lovely as an Eastern dream. I never can forgive him. And he offered her to Eugene."
"Offered her to Eugene!" repeats the mother.