Nor would she go away until Radnor had given his consent. After all, she was his cousin, and if she chose to extend to him the hospitality of a hotel, why should he not accept it, as he would have done at her own home?
Radnor’s pride was the most notable element in his make up. It was indomitable, unyielding. Even as a boy it permeated his life, and made him miserable whenever in his studies he fell short of the high standard he had set for himself.
But for the reasons given he finally decided to accept his cousin Camilla’s invitation. If he could have read the future and foreseen the consequences of that Adirondack visit, he would have shunned the place as a plague spot.
At least this was what he told himself almost always when he recalled it. At other times he felt that he would not have had the experience left out of his life for all the joys that the entire span of three score and ten might have in store for him.
Even before this period he had gained some fame and a little money as an illustrator of children’s books, and now that the last tie that bound him to Cheltenham was severed by his mother’s death, he decided that he would take the step which the nature of his work rendered almost a necessity—settlement in some city close to his markets.
However, this could now easily be deferred till fall, and meantime he had the estate to close up, and then the month with Mrs. Barnes would doubtless do much toward the shaping of his plans.
Radnor had traveled but little, still he possessed that quality of adaptiveness that made him seem easy and at home wherever he was. His mother had been a Bournie, of Huguenot descent, and of the most delicate refinement. Radnor inherited this quality from her in very large degree, tempered with the rugged persistency and vigor of his father.
Her cousin’s arrival at the Lorimac House created all the sensation Mrs. Stilton Barnes could have wished. With the tact of a true diplomatist she had said but little about him beforehand. Expectations too fully roused, she well knew, were almost invariably doomed to disappointment. So she had merely told a few of her most particular friends that she expected a cousin of hers from New England.
“A young artist,” she added, “who has recently lost his mother, so I shall not be expected to give him a gay time.”
Men, of course, were scarce at this distance from the cities. There were any number of boys in their teens, and several dudes, who spent almost as much time as the ladies in devising new combinations of sash and hat bands, outing jackets and shirts. This fact had been uppermost in Camilla Barnes’s mind when she asked Radnor to come to Lorimac. She felt that he would tower head and shoulders above all the other males at the hotel.