A sound of voices broke out through the house long before Mary Lee had finished writing. There was much opening and shutting of doors, and calling of gay messages across the halls as the old mansion awoke to life. Long before she was dressed for dinner, Mary Lee saw a flutter of ribbons and white gowns under the trees as some of the girls strolled down to the springs through the lengthening shadows. Soon she and Travis would be strolling there, too.
Some one began playing on the piano in the drawing-room below, and a familiar air came floating up to her, clear and sweet. It thrilled her with a festive holiday feeling that seemed to give wings to her spirits. "Listen, Travis," she cried, running into the adjoining room, "to-morrow you'll be singing with them."
The music stopped, and the singer came out of the house and stood on the white steps below between the lions, still humming. It was Molly Glendenning, in her rose-coloured hat and dainty ruffled dress of palest pink organdy.
"Oh, isn't she beautiful!" exclaimed Mary Lee, peeping out between the curtains. "Look, Travis. What a picture she makes! 'Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls,'" she quoted softly. "Oh, I know I shall love her," she declared, with all the intense enthusiasm of seventeen.
Four more pages were added to Mary Lee's letter that night. She described everybody whom they had met at dinner, from her Queen Rose, as she called Molly Glendenning, to the courtly old Confederate general at the end of the table. She had been so absorbed in the repartee and bright speeches round her that she had not noticed that she and Travis were not included in the conversation. But Travis had noticed. There were many callers that night after dinner; men who took the girls away singly, in groups, and in pairs, to some sort of an entertainment at the Inn near by. Travis and Mary Lee, sitting all alone on the porch in the moonlight, could hear the music of the band stealing across the lawn. There was a wistful little note in Mary Lee's voice as she exclaimed, "I wish that we had been here long enough to know everybody and go, too. Oh, Travis, it will be so nice when we're really acquainted and are a part of it all," and again her first enthusiasm manifested itself in her voice.
When the end of the week came, Mary Lee's lonely little heart still cried out at being kept "a stranger within the gates." It puzzled her that all her gentle advances should be politely ignored. Nobody seemed to hear either Travis or herself if they ventured a remark. Not an eyelid lifted in recognition if they joined a group on the porch or under the trees by the hammocks. But Travis did not seem to notice. She planned drives and excursions and long walks that kept them away from the house much of the time after the first two days, and Mary Lee was still more puzzled that Travis should be so blind. She wondered if she were not overly sensitive herself, and decided not to cloud Travis's evident enjoyment by a single whisper of her suspicions.
Still it was not drives and excursions for which Mary Lee had longed. It was companionship and many friends she wanted, and it was hard to hide her disappointment when she wrote home, and to make her letters as buoyant and cheery as at first. One evening, after one of these expeditions, she left Travis on the porch and went up-stairs with a heavy heart to write the usual daily letter. She had heard the girls planning a musicale to be given the following night, and she had a sore, left-out feeling, because Travis had not been included. Sitting down by the lamp, she picked up the pen and wrote three words: "Dear, dear father!" Then she laid down her pen and leaned wearily back in the chair. Somehow there seemed so little to tell. Her door was open into the hall to admit the breeze, and she heard some one coming up the stairs. There were voices passing her door, and she recognised the first as Hester Tyler's. She was a young artist, lately arrived, who was a favourite with every one. "It's hardly fair, Molly," she was saying. "People who are sure of their own social position have no need to snub anybody. Miss Dent is certainly a lady, any one can see that, and if her voice is as good as Miss Philura says, she ought to be included in the programme."
"That might do for you, Hester,"—and Mary Lee recognised the voice of her Queen Rose,—"but you are too absorbed in your art to know anything about conventionalities. We society girls have to put up some sort of hedge. If people of that class want to push themselves in where they are not wanted, and Miss Philura lets them come, that's their affair. But, as I told the girls in the beginning:
"'The hand of Douglas is his own, and never shall in friendly grasp
The hand of such as—the mushroom aristocracy of Bank Street—clasp!'