"So far from objecting, I am delighted to hear of it," answered Marion. "Who would not be delighted to find such cousins?"
There was something a little sad as well as ironic in the smile with which Mr. Singleton heard these words, as he extended his hand and laid it on hers.
"That sounds very cordial and sincere," he said. "I hope you may never find reason to qualify your delight. I confess I am glad to find that we are not altogether strangers. It gives me a faint, shadowy claim on your kind offices. I am not a man whom many things please. But you have pleased me, and I shall like to see you again."
"I shall like to come," answered Marion, "for my own pleasure as well as for yours. I am not easily pleased either," she added, with a smile; "so you must draw the inference."
"It is one I should like to be able to draw also," observed General Butler. "This is really too narrow. I cannot claim relationship, Miss Lynde; but remember I am an old friend of your family."
"Of mine, too, then," said Marion, holding out her hand to him. As he bent over it with a flattered air, she had a triumphant sense that it was a conclusive test of her power to be able to charm and influence men of the world and of mature experience like these.
CHAPTER VII.
"Well, Marion," said Helen, "now that you have seen Mr. Singleton, what do you think of him?"
They were walking home through the soft, moonlit summer night when this question was asked; and Marion answered, lightly: "I find him charming. He is refined, fastidious, has seen a great deal of the world, and is altogether a man after my own taste."