"I would prefer this siphon a thousand times to a crimson cloak," murmured Deborah, more to herself than to her cousin.
Lucy heard her, however. "I'll ask, if you like, Debby, and then, perhaps, we may return and purchase it."
"I was just about to leave the wharf, having found the book I sought. May I accompany you to Madam Trevor and pay my compliments to her?"
Lucy beamed with delight, while Deborah consented with an absent-minded nod, and the three returned to the side of Madam Trevor, who greeted the Reverend Mr. Whitney with surprise and only the necessary politeness. Indeed this young Puritan was a sore subject in the Trevor family, whose youngest daughter had lost her faith, and, presumably, her heart, to the exponent of a rigid creed, inimical to every form of that Popery which was, just now, the only religion in disfavor with the erstwhile Catholic Province of Maryland.
The crimson cloak was purchased, the siphon was not; Master Whitney took a reluctant leave of little Mistress Trevor; and her mother, accompanied by Mrs. Paca, started to rejoin Virginia over the fans.
"Surely, Antoinette, you'll scarce return home before dinner to-day. Will you not drive up from here and take pot-luck—just a cold joint—with us?"
"Thank you for us all, vastly, Barbara, but we are bespoken by Dr. Carroll. You're most kind."
"I am sorry. I declare I had thought to see the doctor here to-day, but he's not been near the dock."
"Ay, and he rarely misses a sale. Doubtless, he has gone to the assembly."
Indeed, in one of the two places Dr. Carroll, according to unvarying habit, should have been. He happened, however, to be sitting in his own study, where, as one might say, he had waylaid himself. And he was by now sunk in a reverie so profound as to be totally oblivious of any of the proceedings of the outside world. His two maiden sisters bustled about the house preparing for their guests. His son Charles, a lad of seventeen, was in his own room being tutored in French and the classics by the priest who lived in the family. Thus the doctor had his study, which was his particular world, to himself; and the two people who formed the subject of his meditations were linked together by his thought for the first time. Fate and Fortune can work most curiously, and Destiny toss far indeed, when Claude de Mailly, of Versailles, and Deborah Travis, Virginia born, should have set out towards each other from birth, groping till they met, and for some little time after, too. Charles Carroll, being the instrument, not the confidant, of Fate, was now sitting among his books, perplexed and wondering at himself. That morning, for the second time within twenty-four hours, he had traversed the two blocks that separated his house from the ordinary of Miriam Vawse, to which Claude, at the doctor's instance, had been carried from the ship which had been so nearly the scene of his death. And very differently the young fellow looked to-day. He had been bathed; his hair was combed and clipped; his stubbly beard shaven off, his soiled clothes removed, and a clean, coarse linen shift substituted for the under-garments of foreign make and curious fastening which had much puzzled the excellent Mistress Vawse. And in this new guise all the innate refinement and gentleness of the de Mailly nature had once more come to the surface, and Dr. Carroll had no difficulty in determining that his new-found protégé was of even finer breeding than he had guessed on the previous day.