“Madame Blanc, will you receive the gentleman?” she asked. “Maman has not yet left her room, and I am engaged.”
And for the second time the American made his exit from the Caron establishment without having seen the woman his friends raved about. Descending the steps he remembered the old saw that a third attempt carried a charm with it. He smiled, and the smile suggested that there would be a third attempt.
The Marquise looked at the card he left, and her smile had not so much that was pleasant in it.
“Maman, my conjecture was right,” she remarked as she entered the room of the dowager; “your fine, manly American was really the youth of my Carolina story.”
“Carolina story?” and the dowager looked bewildered for a moment; when one has reached the age of eighty years the memory fails for the things of today; only the affairs of long ago retain distinctness.
“Exactly; the man for whom Rhoda Larue was educated, and of whom you forbade me to speak––the man who bought her from Matthew Loring, of Loringwood, Carolina.”
“You are certain?”
“Here is the name, Kenneth McVeigh. It is not likely there are two Kenneth McVeighs in the same region. How small the world is after all! I used to fancy the width of the ocean was as a barrier between two worlds, yet it has not prevented these people from crossing, and coming to our door!”
She sank into a seat, the card still in her hand.