“Nonsense,” cried Ethel, sharply. “Mr. Farebrother couldn’t begin to give her Sir Archy’s position or Mr. Romaine’s money. He’s an architect, with about enough to live on after his father’s fortune is cut up into six or seven parts. Not that I pretend to despise Mr. Farebrother; I am truthful in all things, and I think he’s a very presentable, pleasant man, and would be a good match. But to suppose that any girl in her senses would take him in preference to Mr. Romaine or Sir Archibald Corbin is too wildly grotesque for anything. I’ll follow Mr. Romaine’s example and say good-night.” And off she went.
Sir Archy had begun to find Newport pleasanter day by day. He had wearied in the beginning of the adulation paid to his title and his money, and it soon came to be understood that he was not in the market, so to speak. He found the Farebrother girls pleasant and amiable, and showed them some attention. As he showed none whatever to any other of the cottage girls, nor did he go to any except to the Farebrothers’ villa, the family were credited with having laid a deep scheme to monopolize him. The real state of the case was too simple to be understood by artificial people.
Then he had an agreeable sense of familiarity with Mrs. Chessingham and Miss Maywood. They were really well bred and well educated English gentlewomen. Ethel’s aloneness had perhaps developed rather too sharply her aspirations toward an establishment of her own, but that is a not uncommon thing among women, and the terrible English frankness brings it to the front without any disguises whatever. Sir Archy, though, knew how to take care of himself among his own countrywomen, as Englishmen do. But he was like clay in the hands of the potter where his American cousin, as he persisted in calling Letty Corbin, was concerned.
Whether Letty was extravagantly fond of him or utterly detested him he could not for the life of him discern. He did discover unmistakably, though, that she was a very charming girl. Her frankness, so different from Ethel Maywood’s frankness, was perfectly bewitching. She acknowledged with the utmost candor her fondness for admiration,—her willingness to swallow not only the bait of flattery, but the hook, bob, sinker, and all,—and calmly related the details of her various forms of coquetry. Thus she possessed the charm of both art and simplicity, but, as the case is with her genus, when she fancied she was artful she was very simple, and when she meant to be very simple she was extremely artful.
But she was a delightful and never ending puzzle to Sir Archy. He was manly, clever, and modest, but deep down in his heart was fixed that ineradicable masculine delusion that he was, after all, a very desirable fellow for any girl; and his money and his title had always been treated as such outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual grace, that he would have been more or less than human if he had not been sanguine of success if ever he really put his mind to winning any girl. But Letty was a conundrum to him of the sort that it is said drove old Homer to suicide because he could not solve it.
Farebrother, however, understood Letty and Sir Archy and the Romaine party perfectly, and the little comedy played before his eyes had a profound interest for him. When he heard of Mr. Romaine’s decision to go to New York and stay at the same hotel with the Corbins, he chuckled and shrewdly suspected that Mr. Romaine had in mind more Miss Maywood’s discomfiture than Miss Corbin’s satisfaction. He chuckled more than ever when, on the evening he went to see the Corbins off on the boat, he found the Romaine party likewise established on deck with Mr. Romaine’s valet and Mrs. Chessingham’s maid superintending the transfer of a van-load of trunks to the steamer.
They were all sitting together on the upper deck when Farebrother appeared. He carried three bouquets exactly alike, which he handed respectively to Mrs. Chessingham, Miss Maywood, and Letty. Miss Maywood colored beautifully under the thin gray veil drawn over her handsome, aquiline features. Mrs. Chessingham smiled prettily, but Letty’s face was a study. A thunder-cloud would have been more amiable. Farebrother, however, was not in the least disconcerted, but went over to her and smiled at her in a very exasperating manner.
“So kind of you to give us all bouquets alike,” began Letty, scornfully.
Meanwhile, in order to keep her chagrin from being obvious to Ethel and Mrs. Chessingham, who would by no means have understood her particularity about attentions, she was cuddling the bouquet as if it were a real treasure.
“I suppose your feeble intelligence was not equal to inventing three separate bouquets for one occasion,” she continued, frowning at the offender.