The Guions had only recently come to Baltimore from the South. Their old home had been very near to Margaret’s, and she had consequently seen much more of Mrs. Guion, of late years, than of Alan. The children, of whom there were three, ranging from two to seven years of age, were cherished acquaintances of Margaret’s, and hailed her arrival with a hearty enthusiasm, that she responded to with much cordiality. Ethel, the eldest, had been taught by her mother, long ago, to call Miss Trevennon “Auntie Margaret,” and Amy and Decourcy had, of course, adopted the title. They were charming children, rather delicate in health, and watched and guarded with such care by their anxious mother, that they had the air of frail exotics. Mr. Guion had died when Decourcy was a baby, and it was because Alan had decided to settle in Baltimore for the practise of his profession, the law, that Mrs. Guion had moved her little family there. She was enthusiastically attached to her only brother, and never wearied of discoursing upon his perfections and displaying the numberless useful and ornamental presents that he lavished upon her children and herself.
“Wasn’t it good of Alan to insist upon our coming to Baltimore, that he might make his home with us?” said Mrs. Guion, talking to her young cousin, the day after the latter’s arrival. “So many young men would have thought it a nuisance to be hampered by a woman and three children; but he insisted on our coming.”
“I can hardly see how he could regard you in the light of a nuisance,” said Margaret, smiling; “your chief object in life seems to be to humor his whims and caprices. He could certainly not secure such comfort as you administer to him, in any bachelor-quarters on earth.”
This view of the case had never occurred to Mrs. Guion, and she rejected it almost indignantly, and argued long to convince her cousin that she was, in all respects, the favored one; but without much success.
It was by a mere accident that Margaret discovered, a day or two after her arrival, that Alan’s sleeping-apartment, situated just above the front drawing-room, had been exchanged for one on the other side of the hall. In an instant it flashed upon her that her morning performance on the piano had been the cause of it. To be quite certain, however, she went to Mrs. Guion and asked her directly if it was not so.
“How did you find it out?” said Mrs. Guion; “you were not to know anything about it. The other room is quite as convenient for Alan. He says he likes it just as well, and he wouldn’t for the world have you know that he moved on that account. But, you know, he never could bear noise. Even the children understand that they must be quiet when he is here.”
“Is he an invalid, in any way?” asked Margaret.
“Oh, dear no! but he always had that objection to noise, and I think he is more set in his ways now than ever. I tell him he ought to marry.”
“If he values his personal ease so much, it might be a mistake to imperil it by matrimony,” said Margaret, with a touch of contempt in her voice not discernible to her unsuspecting cousin.
“Affluence and idleness have made him luxurious,” said Margaret to herself, reflectively, when Mrs. Guion had left her alone. “I suppose those two things are apt to go together. And yet Cousin Eugenia says Mr. Gaston has always been well off, and certainly the veriest pauper could not work harder! And still——”