Farebrother’s countenance was a study during all this. When the Colonel had left the room, he turned to Letty and said, half laughing as he spoke, “Is it possible that Colonel Corbin picked up Madame de Fonblanque at the river landing and brought her here to stay until she chooses to quit?”
“Of course,” answered Letty, tartly. “What else was there left to do?”
A great part of Farebrother’s enjoyment of his Corbin Hall friends consisted in their simplicity and the number of hearty laughs they afforded him.
“I declare, Miss Corbin,” he exclaimed, after indulging himself in a masculine ha-ha, “it’s a great thing to know a place where one can get a new sensation. It can always be had in Virginia. You are certainly the simplest people about some things and the shrewdest about others I ever saw.”
“Thank you,” answered Letty, smiling, “but, please, as I am not quite a woman of the world yet—tell me what is the matter with Madame de Fonblanque?”
“Nothing on earth that I know of. But there is room for suspicion in everybody’s mind who knows the world. What is her mysterious business with Mr. Romaine? Likely as not, blackmail.”
Letty jumped as Farebrother said this; for at that moment the door opened and Madame de Fonblanque entered.
Within ten minutes after her introduction to Farebrother, Letty saw a subtile change in her. She exchanged her charming candor and frank personal conversation for the guarded manner of a woman who knows a good deal about this wicked world, and she conversed upon the safest and most general subjects. When the Colonel returned they all went in to supper, which boasted seven different kinds of bread, served by Dad Davy with his grandest flourishes. But the Colonel’s delightful assumption that Madame de Fonblanque would be their guest for at least a month, and would probably return in the autumn, “when the climate of old Virginia, madam, is truly glorious and life-giving,” did not meet with the same enthusiastic acceptance from Madame de Fonblanque as it had done at dinner.
The truth was, with Farebrother’s keen eyes upon her, and his polite but guarded manner toward her, she was dealing with a different person from the innocent old Colonel and the unsuspicious Letty. The conversation turned upon Mr. Romaine. The Colonel glowered darkly, and growled below his breath that Romaine, with age and eccentricities, was becoming intolerable. Madame de Fonblanque shrugged her shoulders.
“I hope none of you will be so unhappy as to have business transactions with Mr. Romaine. You will certainly find him a very difficult person.” She said Farebrother seemed to be the only friend that Mr. Romaine had at the table.