He pressed him to become his guest. The reply startled him.
“I shall be most happy to visit you later on, but for the present I am going to Mount Vernon, New York, where I have—friends.”
It was a startling answer to St. George, who had also planned an early trip to Mount Vernon.
Why he wished to go he hardly knew, except to revisit in silence and sorrow the places sacred to his brief, ill-fated love-dream.
“As for the Maury’s, they need not know I am there. I shall not call, for I despise that scheming Maybelle,” he decided, remembering how falsely she had told Floy she was engaged to marry him.
But he did not tell the nobleman that he also was soon to visit Mount Vernon. He parted from him with frank regret, expressing the hope that they might soon meet again.
Then they went on shore, and there was Alva radiant with joy to meet them.
She had come down in the carriage to meet them, and tears flashed into her bright eyes as she looked at her darling brother so pale, so changed, so sad.
Her mother had written to her simply that her son’s love affair was ended forever, making no mention of the girl’s death, and Alva had been very indignant, saying to Floy:
“Mamma has made him give up his love. I feared she would, but I hoped St. George would hold out against her arguments. I see how it is. He loves mamma so dearly—never son adored a mother so blindly—and she has made him think that the girl is unworthy of him.”