. . . . . . .
Before going further in this story it may be as well to say a word or two concerning the effects of that letter at Manby Hall.
If Gustie Robb told Aggie Blake once that he loved her and had made up his mind to live so as to win her for his wife, he told her twenty times.
Now, Gustie was not a bad-looking fellow. Tall, dark as to eyes and hair, a half-aquiline nose which gave him a somewhat Jewish cast of countenance, a sweet, persuasive tongue, and groomed to perfection. He was a trifle solemn, however, and in this way so different in character from Aggie, who in manner was very like her brother—always merry, and as often as not singing like the happy bird she was.
Gustie was as poor as lobster-shell when there is no more lobster left in it. But that would not have mattered anything to Aggie could she have cared for him. But she did not, and told him so laughingly.
'I don't believe,' she said, 'in marriages between cousins, so I won't marry you. I don't believe in marriage at all, so I won't marry any one else.'
'Ah, Cousin Aggie, then I shall live in hope.'
'In hope of what?' she asked.
'In hope of getting'——
She didn't let him finish the sentence—in fact, she finished it for him, for she was feeling full of mischief just then—'In hope of getting my fortune. That's it, isn't it, Gustie?' Her fortune, by the way, was in her own right.