IT was two evenings prior to the day fixed for Miss Trevennon’s return to her home. January, with its multifarious engagements, had passed, and February was well advanced. It had been a very happy time to Margaret, and, now that her visit was almost at an end, she found herself much prone to reverie, and constantly falling into quiet fits of musing. There was much pleasant food for thought in looking back, but an instinct constantly warned her against looking forward.
On this particular evening, Miss Trevennon and Louis Gaston were alone. Cousin Eugenia had gone to her room, and General Gaston was out. Margaret had observed that she quite often found herself alone with Mr. Gaston lately, and she even fancied sometimes that Cousin Eugenia contrived to have it so. She smiled to think of the multiplicity of Cousin Eugenia’s little manœuvres, and the book she had been reading fell to her lap. She glanced toward Louis, sitting some little distance off at the other side of the fire-place; but he was quite lost to view behind the opened sheet of the Evening Star. So Miss Trevennon fixed her eyes on the fire, and fell into a fit of musing.
She was looking her best to-night. There had been guests at dinner, and she was dressed accordingly. Black suited her better than anything else, and the costume of black silk and lace which she wore now was exquisitely becoming. Her rounded, slender arms were bare, and a snowy patch of her lovely neck was visible above the lace of her square corsage. Her long black draperies fell richly away to one side, over the Turkey rug, and as she rested lightly on the angle of her little high heel, with one foot, in its dainty casing of black silk stocking and low-cut slipper, lightly laid across the other, her graceful, easy attitude and elegant toilet made her a striking figure, apart from the distinguished beauty of her face. Louis Gaston, who had noiselessly lowered his paper, took in every detail of face, figure, attitude and costume, with a sense of keen appreciation, and, as he continued to look, a sudden smile of merriment curved his lips. Miss Trevennon, looking up, met this smile, and smiled in answer to it.
“What is it?” she said. “What were you thinking of?”
“May I tell you?” he asked, still smiling.
“Yes; please do.”
“I was recalling the fact that, when you first arrived—before I had seen you—I used to speak of you to Eugenia as ‘The Importation.’ It is no wonder that I smile now at the remembrance.”
“It was very impertinent, undoubtedly,” said Margaret; “but I won’t refuse to forgive you, if you, in your turn, will agree to forgive me my impertinences, which have been many.”
“It would be necessary to recall them first,” he said, “and that I am unable to do.”
“I have been dictatorial and critical and aggressive, and I have had no right to be any of these. I have magnified my own people persistently, in talking to you, and depreciated yours. You mustn’t take me as a specimen of Southern courtesy. Wait till you see my father. I’m a degenerate daughter.”