Miss Cottrell vouchsafed no reply, but her eyes flashed fire. I pitied the uncomfortable position into which false pride had led her, and hastily drew father's attention to the beauty of the common across which we were driving.
"So you have Professor Faulkner at 'Gay Bowers,'" father said presently. "I am looking forward to making his acquaintance."
I started and felt my colour rise.
"Why, what do you know of him?" I asked eagerly.
"No more than all the world may know," he said. "That he is a very brilliant young scholar and has written a scientific criticism of Shakespeare's plays which promises to become a standard work."
"Oh, father, you fairly frighten me!" I said; yet somehow I was very glad. "I know he writes and studies a great deal. He spends all the mornings in his room at work, yet he is so simple and human in his ways that auntie and I had almost forgotten that he is a learned professor."
"Don't you know yet, Nan, that greatness and simplicity are generally combined?" my father asked, with a smile. "It is your shallow-pated man who gives himself airs."
Aunt Patty was delighted to welcome father, for she had no more expected to see him than I had. We seemed a large party at luncheon, and there was plenty of talk, although Miss Cottrell was unusually silent. I was terribly afraid that father would call her "Miss Smith," but happily, he never addressed a remark to her, being much absorbed in talk with Colonel Hyde and Professor Faulkner. He seemed to get on exceedingly well with the latter, and I longed to hear what they were saying, but with Agneta beside me demanding my attention and Paulina chattering to me across the table, I could never catch more than a word or two. Paulina made various attempts to draw out Agneta, but with only partial success.
"Say," she said to me aside, after luncheon, "what is the matter with that cousin of yours? Is she shy, or sick, or what?"
"I don't think she is shy," I said, "but she has not been well lately and is rather depressed."