After little further conversation, it was arranged that Miss Arabella should go through a course of merely fashionable accomplishments, Madame Duvant assuring her mother that neither spelling-book nor dictionary should in any way annoy her. Mildred, on the contrary, was to be thoroughly drilled in every thing necessary for a teacher to know, Mrs. Greenleaf hinting that the sooner her education was completed the better she would be pleased, for it cost a great deal to clothe, feed and school her. Madame Duvant promised to execute the wishes of her patron, who gathered up her flowing robes, and with a dozen or more kisses for her daughter, and a nod of her head for Mildred, stepped into her carriage and was driven rapidly away.
Just across the spacious grounds of the Duvant Seminary, and divided from them by a wall which it seemed almost impossible to scale, stood a huge stone building, whose hacked walls, bare floors and dingy windows—from which were frequently suspended a cap, a pair of trousers, or a boy's leg—stamped it at once as "The College," the veriest pest in the world, as Madame Duvant called it, when, with all the vigilance both of herself and Argus-eyed teachers, she failed to keep her young ladies from making the acquaintance of the students, who winked at them in church, bowed to them in the streets, tied notes to stones and threw them over the ponderous wall, while the girls waved their handkerchiefs from their windows, and in various other ways eluded the watchfulness of their teachers. A great acquisition to the fun-loving members of the seminary was Arabella Greenleaf, and she had scarcely been there six weeks ere she was perfectly well acquainted with every student whom she considered at all worth knowing. But upon only one were her brightest glances and her most winsome smiles lavished, and that was George Clayton, a young man from South Carolina, who was said to be very wealthy. He was too honorable to join in the intrigues of his companions, and when at last he became attracted by the witching eyes and dashing manners of Arabella Greenleaf, he went boldly to Madame Duvant and asked permission to see the young lady in the parlor.
His request was granted, and during the two years he remained at college, he continued occasionally to call upon Arabella, who, each time that he saw her, seemed more pleasing, for she was beautiful, and when she chose to be so was very courteous and agreeable. One evening when George called as usual and asked to see her, he waited a long time, and was about making up his mind to leave, when a fair, delicate looking girl, with deep blue eyes and auburn hair, entered the room, introducing herself as Miss Graham, the cousin of Arabella, who, she said, was indisposed and unable to come down.
"She bade me say that she was very sorry not to see you," added Mildred, for she it was, blushing deeply as she met the eager, admiring eye of George Clayton.
Gladly would he have detained her, but with a polite good evening, she left him in a perfect state of bewilderment. "Strange that I never observed her before, for I must have seen her often," he thought, as he slowly wended his way back to his rooms, "and stranger still that Arabella never told me she had a cousin here."
The next time he met Arabella his first inquiry was for her cousin, and why she had never mentioned her. With a heightened color Arabella answered, "Oh, she's a little body, who never cares to be known—a perfect bookworm and man-hater."
The words bookworm and man-hater produced upon George Clayton a far different effect from what Arabella had intended, and he often found himself thinking of the soft blue eyes of Mildred Graham. Unlike some men, there was nothing terrible to him in a bookish woman, and he might, perhaps, have sought another interview with Mildred, but for a circumstance which threw her entirely in the shade.
The annual examination of Madame Duvant's seminary was drawing near. Arabella was to graduate, while both she and Mildred were competitors for a prize offered for the best composition. There was a look of wonder on Mildred's face, when she saw her cousin's name among the list, for composition was something in which Arabella did not excel. Greatly then did Mildred marvel when day after day she found her, pencil in hand, and apparently lost in thought, as she filled one sheet after another, until at last it was done.
"Now, Milly," said Arabella, "You correct the spelling and copy it for me—that's a good girl."
Mildred had acted in this capacity too often to refuse, and with a martyr's patience, she corrected and copied the manuscript, wondering the while from whence came the sudden inspiration which had so brightened Arabella's ideas. But if she had any suspicions of the truth, she kept them to herself, handing her own composition in with that of her cousin, and calmly waiting the result.