“I should like to see that wonderful country. Will you let me, some day?”
“Strangers are always welcome in the South,” she said; “but you would remain a stranger there. The life would never suit you.”
She felt instinctively that he did not like this, and—out of pure compassion at having hurt a person who had been so good to her—she set to work to make herself as delightful to him as she could, and with such success that Gladys, who was taking notes from a back seat, formed a conclusion, which definitely modified her future course toward her cousin.
So marked was this that when, at the end of the excursion, Gladys invited their late host to come and dine informally that evening, if he had no other engagement, and when he had delightedly accepted and driven away, she followed her little country cousin to her room and offered in the pleasantest way to help her out with an evening toilet.
“I have one, thank you,” Carter said, “but I’m just as much obliged.”
She hadn’t it in her to bear malice, and far enough from her consciousness was any suspicion of the real reason of her cousin’s change toward her. Had she been present a few moments later at a conversation which took place between the three sisters much light would have been thrown upon this point. Here Gladys boldly avowed her belief that Carter would be asked to become Mrs. Stafford. Never, she said, had she seen Jim treat any girl as he treated Carter, and without the necessity of much talk about it, the sisters were unanimously agreed that it would be a good thing to have Jim Stafford in the family on any terms. It was only too evident that there was no chance of this on terms more close and acceptable than the present ones, for his attitude toward the Miss Ayrs of New York had been strictly limited to the off-hand intercourse of old friends and neighbors. And Carter, in her guileless heart, would never have imagined a further reason yet. This existed in the fact that Jim Stafford had been so ardently angled for by so many of their friends that it would be a triumph, in a way, to the Ayr girls to have him even for a cousin. Their thoughts had gone even farther than that, and they looked forward to being on cousinly terms in the establishment over which Jim Stafford’s wife would preside in New York.
So when Carter came down to dinner that evening, innocent as a lamb of any such designs and imaginings as occupied the worldly hearts about her, she was received with great friendliness by her cousins, and her gown was pronounced “as smart as possible” by Gladys, “very chic” by Ethel, and to have “quite a cachet” by Rosamond.
And indeed it was a charming thing, and she was a charming thing in it! No one could have dreamed of such a neck and such arms, under their former unbeautiful coverings, and the clear cool green of her crêpey draperies brought out the pure tints of skin and hair and eyes.
Jim Stafford, when he came, looked at her quite adoringly, and nobody could wonder! One or two others of the bachelor habitués of the house had been bidden to the impromptu dinner and Carter drew all eyes upon herself, with as little volition and consciousness as a magnet.
After dinner, Stafford got hold of the guitar and beguiled her into the library, and she sang to him about God’s saints and the gospel train and the Bridegroom, until every other member of the party followed and gathered around her.