“Nay, I’m glad you don’t say I talk so now,” said Cherry. “They tell me at Oxford that my tongue always betrays me when I am excited. But here comes Alvar; now make him fall in love with Westmoreland. Alvar, Miss Seyton has been abroad, so she is not quite a benighted savage.”
“My brother Cheriton is not a savage,” said Alvar, smiling, as Cherry moved away. “He is the kindest and most beautiful person I have ever seen.”
“Yes, he is very kind. But I hope, Mr Lester, that you do not think us all savages, with that one exception.”
“In future I can never think so,” said Alvar, with a bow. “These boys are savage certainly—very savage, but I do not care.”
“It is strange, is it not,” said Virginia, rather timidly, “to have to make acquaintance with one’s own father?”
“Of my father I say nothing,” said Alvar, with a sudden air of hauteur, that made the impulsive Virginia blush, and feel as if she had taken a liberty with him, till he added, with a smile, “Miss Seyton, too, I hear, is a stranger.”
“Yes, I have been away ever since I was a little girl, and—and I had forgotten my relations.”
“I have not known mine,” said Alvar; “Cheriton wrote to me once a little letter. I have it now, and since then I have loved him. I do not know the rest, and they wish I was not here.”
“But don’t you think,” said Virginia earnestly, “that we—that you will soon feel more at home with them?”
“Oh, I do not know,” said Alvar, with a shrug. “It is cold, and I am so dull that I could die. They understand no thing. And in Spain I was the chief; I could do what I wished. Here I must follow and obey. My name even is different. I do not know ‘Mr Lester.’ I am ‘Don Alvar.’ Will you not call me so?”