Giles Brent burst out into a great laugh.
"Oh—not in beauty!" Peggy rushed on, all in confusion—"not in beauty, of course, nor in mind, but could I make my character like hers? You see, Christopher has always told me how perfect she was, and said how proud he should be to see me like her."
"Christopher!" exclaimed Brent.
"Oho!" he thought to himself, "so the wind blows from that quarter, does it? That explains many things. But why under heaven did he conceal the whole business from me?"
Aloud he said: "Never mind what Christopher tells you, pretty Peggy! Take my advice and do not waste your time in trying to be like this one or that,—not even my Cousin Elinor. You have gifts and graces all your own. Make the most of them, and let the others go. Who is that outside the door? I thought I knew every man in St. Mary's, at least by sight."
"That?" said Peggy, looking out at the window with a fine show of indifference, and then moving hastily nearer the fire, "that is no citizen of St. Mary's, but a young Virginian in command of the ketch Lady Betty from the York River."
"And his name?"
"Romney Huntoon."
"Huntoon—? I wonder who his father is. Know you anything of his family?"
"No, save that his father was a physician once and won great reputation somehow, and his mother was a daughter of Sir William Romney, and heiress to a fortune, wherewith they bought wide tracts of land on the York River, and live, 'tis said, in more state than any in Virginia save Governor Berkeley himself."