“I can’t say,” replied Letty, slyly, and examining her cousin with much approval. He had the delicious, fresh, manly beauty of the Briton, and he had quite lost that uncanny likeness to a dead man which had been so remarkable ten years ago. He had, however, the British simplicity which takes all of an American girl’s subtilities in perfect candor and good faith. He and Letty got along wonderfully together. In fact, Letty’s fluency and affability was such that she could have got on with an ogre. But presently Farebrother came up and carried her off, under Sir Archy’s very nose, toward the dining-room. As Letty walked across the beautiful hall into the dining-room beyond, some new sense of luxury seemed to awaken in her. She was familiar enough with certain elegancies of life,—at that very moment she had her great-grandmother’s string of pearls around her milky-white throat,—and Corbin Hall contained a store of heirlooms for which the average Newport cottager would have bartered all his modern bric-à-brac. But this nicety of detail in comfort was perfectly new and delightful to her, and she confided so much to Farebrother.
“You see,” she complained, confidentially, “down in Virginia we spend all we have on the luxuries of life, and then we have to do without the necessaries.”
“I see,” answered Farebrother, “but then you’ve been acknowledged as a cousin by an English baronet. Think of that, and it will sustain you, and make you patient under your trials more than all the consolation of religion.”
“I’ll try to,” answered Letty, demurely.
“And he is a first-rate fellow, too,” continued Farebrother, who could be magnanimous. “I made up to him at the club before I knew who he was—”
“Oh, nonsense. You knew he was a baronet.”
“I’ll swear I didn’t. Presently, though, it leaked out that he was what the newspapers call a titled person. We were talking about some red wine that a villain of a steward was trying to palm off on us, and Sir Archy gave his opinion, which was simply rubbish. I told him so in parliamentary language, and when he wanted to argue the point, I gently reminded him that my father and my grandfather had been in the wine-importing line, and I had been born and bred to the wine business.”
By this time Farebrother’s light-blue expressive eyes were dancing, and Letty fully took in the joke.
“The descendants of the dealers in tobacco, drugs, and hardware, who were sitting around, were naturally much pained at my admission, but Sir Archy wasn’t, and actually gave in to my opinion. He stuck to me so close—now, Miss Corbin, I swear I am not lying—that I couldn’t shake him off, and he walked home with me. Of course I had to ask him in, and then the girls came out; they couldn’t have been kept away from him unless they had been tied, and he has pervaded the house more or less ever since. That is how it is that the noble house of Corbin is to-day accepting the hospitality of the humble house of Farebrother.”
“Very kind of us, I’m sure,” said Letty, gravely, “but I’d feel more important if I had more clothes. You can’t imagine how fine my wardrobe seemed down in Virginia, and here I feel as if I hadn’t a rag to my back.”