“You forget,” said Vane, softly, waving her great feather fan to and fro, “there is an attraction here now that at other times was wanting.”
She spoke lightly, almost laughingly, but her words pleased the man’s vanity.
“Can it be that I am that attraction?” he asked, quickly. Then he added: “Cousin Vane, I am indeed honored.”
“You jump to hasty conclusions,” she retorted, “but I will pardon your excessive vanity, if you will give me a spray of stephanotis for my dress.”
“Is it your favorite flower?” he asked, leading the way back to the conservatory.
“I love all flowers,” Vane answered; “that is,” she added, carelessly, “all hothouse flowers.”
“You shall be well supplied in future.”
“Thanks.”
She drew off her gloves and pinned the spray of wax-like flowers amid her laces. Her hands were white and delicate, yet Stuart’s mind unconsciously flew to two little brown ones he had seen that afternoon grasping a plainly bound book. There was even more beauty in them than in his cousin’s, he thought.
“I shall look to you, Cousin Stuart,” Miss Charteris observed, as she fastened her gloves again, “to initiate me into the mysteries of country life. I intend to dabble in farming, milk the cow, toss the hay, picnic in the fields, and get quite burned and brown.”