Flowers of the choicest description were everywhere; fresh draperies had been put up wherever they were needed, and most tastefully arranged; the servants were all arrayed in immaculate suits, and went tiptoeing around with that air of importance and expectancy which betrayed the interest they felt in the arrival of an English peer; while Mrs. Richards and Josephine were perfectly gorgeous in new dresses of latest fashion and most artistic design.
The coach, with its burnished trimmings and its span of spirited bays in their gold-mounted harness, was standing before the door, ready to go to the station to meet the expected guest; and with all these evidences of preparation around her, Star would have been less than human not to have experienced some curiosity regarding my “Lord Carrol, of Carrolton.”
“Well, it may be one of the ‘good times that I can’t be in,’ as poor Glory McGuirk would say; but then I had my good time yesterday, and I don’t know as I care very much,” she thought, with a smile half sad, half tender, as she watched the carriage containing Josephine and her father whirl away in grand style to the station.
However, thinking it might be expected of her to make a good appearance in case she should happen to meet the distinguished stranger, she changed her school dress for a fresh, blue lawn, trimmed with a dainty white edging, spanned her small waist with a broad belt, and fastened a bunch of waxen snow-drops at her throat.
She had no jewels, no elaborate lingerie like Josephine with which to make herself attractive; but she had a way of giving herself such a touch of elegance with these little accessories, despite her simple attire, that no one could pass her by unnoticed; and now, with that new-born smile of happiness on her ripe lips, that light of love and hope in her eyes, and the coming and going color in her cheeks, she was fairest of the fair.
When her toilet was completed she sat down by her window—which, although in the third story, was upon the front of the house, where she could look directly down upon the porch, and also commanded a view of the winding avenue which led down to the road—to watch for the return of the coach and the coming of the illustrious guest.
Sitting there, she fell to musing—to thinking of the time when she should go back to dear old England, the land of her birth, the home of her love.
Only a few months more and her course of study would be finished; a little more of faithful application to her books, a little season of patience and forbearance, then a life of brightness and happiness.
Some one would come for her then, and she would go away forever from the slights, and sneers, and malice which had made her life so cheerless and forlorn, so hard to endure during the past year.
So absorbed did she become thinking of this, that she did not hear the carriage when it turned in at the gate and came smoothly rolling up over the hard, graveled drive-way, and it had almost reached the door before she was aware that at last the noted, titled stranger had arrived.