"I am going to Dr. Elderkin's," said Ravenel. "I hear that he has been kind enough to store my electrical machine during our absence. He was out when I called on him this morning, but he was to be at home by six this evening. I am anxious to see the machine."
"Oh, papa, don't! How can you be so addled about your sciences! You are just like a little boy come home from a visit, and pulling over his playthings. Do let the machine go till to-morrow."
"My dear, consider how costly a plaything it is. I couldn't replace it for five hundred dollars."
"When will you come back?" demanded Lillie.
"By half-past seven at the latest. Bring in Mrs. Larue to help entertain Captain Colburne; and be sure to ask him to wait for me."
When he quitted the house Lillie went to the window and watched him until he was out of sight. She always had a childish aversion to being left alone, and solitude was now particularly objectionable to her, so forsaken did she feel in this city where she had once been so happy. After a time she remembered Captain Colburne and the social duties of a state of young ladyhood. She hurried to her room, lighted both gas-burners, turned their full luminosity on the mirror, loosened up the flossy waves of her blonde hair, tied on a pink ribbon-knot, and then a blue one, considered gravely as to which was the most becoming and finally took a profile view of the effect by means of a hand-glass, prinking and turning and adjusting her plumage like a canary. She was conscientiously aware, you perceive, of her obligation to put herself in suitable condition to please the eye of a visitor. She was not a learned woman, nor an unpleasantly strong-minded one, but an average young lady of good breeding—just such as most men fall in love with, who wanted social success, and depended for it upon pretty looks and pleasant ways. By the time that these private devoirs were accomplished Mrs. Larue entered, bearing marks of having given her person a similar amount of fastidious attention. Each of these ladies saw what the other had been about, but neither thought of being surprised or amused at it. To their minds such preparation was perfectly natural and womanly, and they would have deemed the absence of it a gross piece of untidiness and boorishness. Mrs. Larue put Lillie's blue ribbon-knot a little more off her forehead, and Lillie smoothed out an almost imperceptible wrinkle in Mrs. Larue's waist-belt. I am not positively sure, indeed, that waist-belts were then worn, but I am willing! to take my oath that some small office of the kind was rendered.
Of course it would be agreeable to have a scene here between Colburne and Miss Ravenel; some burning words to tell, some thrilling looks to describe, such as might show how they stood with regard to each other—something which would visibly advance both these young persons' heart-histories. But they behaved in a disappointingly well-bred manner, and entirely refrained from turning their feelings wrong side outwards. With the exception of Miss Ravenel's inveterate blush and of a slightly unnatural rapidity of utterance in Captain Colburne, they met like a young lady and gentleman who were on excellent terms, and had not seen each other for a month or two. This is not the way that heroes and heroines meet on the boards or in some romances; but in actual human society they frequently balk our expectations in just this manner. Melo-dramatically considered real life is frequently a failure.
"You don't know how pleasant it is to me to meet you and your father," said Colburne. "It seems like New Boston over again."
The time during which he had known the Ravenels at New Boston was now a pasture of very delightful things to his memory.
"It is pleasant to me because it seems like New Orleans," laughed Miss Lillie. "No, not much like New Orleans, either," she added. "It used to be so gay and amusing! You have made an awfully sad place of it with your patriotic invasion."