"You mean to read them all?" she asked.
"Isn't it time that I should?" replied her pupil.
"Well—it is a good plan," returned Olivia, rather absently.
Truth to tell, she was more puzzled every day. She had begun to be quite sure that something had happened. It seemed as if a slight coldness existed between herself and her whilom adorer. The simplicity of her enthusiasm was gone. Her affection had changed as her outward bearing. It was a better regulated and less noticeable emotion. Once or twice Olivia fancied she had seen the girl looking at her even sadly, as if she felt, for the moment, a sense of some loss.
"Perhaps it was very clumsy in me," she used to say to herself. "Perhaps I don't understand her, after all."
But she could not help looking on with interest. She had never before seen Laurence enjoy himself so thoroughly. He had been working very hard during the past year, and was ready for his holiday. He found the utter idleness, which was the chief feature of the place, a good thing. There was no town or village within twenty miles, newspapers were a day or two old when they arrived, there were very few books to be found, and there was absolutely no excitement. At night the band brayed in the empty-looking ball-room, and a few very young couples danced, in a desultory fashion and without any ceremony. The primitive, domesticated slowness of the place was charming. Most of the guests had come from the far South at the beginning of the season and would remain until the close of it; so they had had time to become familiar with each other and to throw aside restraint.
"There is nothing to distract one," Ferrol said, "nothing to rouse one, nothing to inspire one—nothing! It is delicious! Why didn't I know of it before?"
He had plenty of time to study his sister's friend. She rode and walked with him and Olivia when they made their excursions, she listened while he read aloud to them as he lay on the grass in a quiet corner of the grounds. He thought her natural reserve held her from expressing her opinion on what he read very freely; it certainly did not occur to him that she was beginning her literary education under his guidance. He could see that the things which pleased him most were not lost upon her. Her face told him that. One moonlight night, as they sat on an upper gallery, he began to speak of the novelty of the aspect of the country as it presented itself to an outsider who saw it for the first time.
"It is a new life, and a new people," he said. "And, by the way, Olivia, where is the new species of young woman I was to see—the daughter of the people who does not belong to her sphere?"
He turned to Louisiana.