"He was right, my dear. I have no doubt that he was right," replied Mr. Culpeper, in the tone of solemn sentiment which he reserved for deceased parents. Though he was dyspeptic by constitution, and inclined to gout and other bodily infirmities, he applied himself philosophically to a heavy breakfast such as his wife's father had enjoyed.
"Stephen is looking so well this morning," remarked Mrs. Culpeper in a sprightly voice. "He has quite a colour."
Mr. Culpeper rolled his large brown eyes, as handsome and as opaque as chestnuts, in the direction of his son. Though he would never have observed the improvement unless his wife had called his attention to it, his kind heart was honestly relieved to discover that Stephen looked better. He had worried a good deal in his sluggish way over what he thought of as "the effect of the war" on his son. With the strong paternal instinct which beheld every child as a branch on a genealogical tree, he had been as much disturbed as his wife by the gossip which had reached him about the daughter of Gideon Vetch.
"Feeling all right, my boy?" he inquired now, in the tone of indulgent anxiety which, from the first day of his return, had exasperated Stephen so profoundly.
"Oh, first rate," responded the young man lightly. "Is there anything you would like me to help you about?"
"No, there's nothing I can't attend to myself—" Mr. Culpeper had begun to reply, when catching sight of his wife's frowning face, he continued hurriedly: "Unless you would care to glance over that deed about those lots of your mother's?"
Stephen smiled, for he had seen the warning change in his mother's expression, and he was thinking that she was still a remarkably pretty woman. "With pleasure," he returned. "I shall be busy all day, but I'll look it over to-morrow. To-night I am going to the Harrisons' dance."
"Oh, you're going!" exclaimed Mary Byrd, who had come in late and was just taking her seat. "I suppose Mother is making you take Margaret Blair?"
Again Mrs. Culpeper made a vague frowning movement of her eyebrows and gently shook her head; but the gesture of disapproval to which her husband had responded obediently was entirely wasted upon her youngest daughter. "You needn't shake your head at me, Mother," she remarked lightly. "Of course I know you are making him take her when he would rather a hundred times go with Patty Vetch."
The frown on Mrs. Culpeper's face turned to a look of panic. "Mary Byrd, you are impossible," she said sternly.