Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Italic text is denoted by _underscores_. On page 16, "bran-new" may be a typo for "brand-new". [Illustration: Constance Cary Harrison] A Virginia Cousin & Bar Harbor Tales _By_ Mrs Burton Harrison M D CCC XCV Lamson Wolffe and Co. Boston and New York Copyright, 1895, By Lamson, Wolffe, & Co All rights reserved Note by the Author The little story "A Virginia Cousin," here put into print for the first time, is in some sort a tribute offered by a long-exiled child of the South to her native soil. It is also a transcript of certain phases of that life in the metropolis which has been pooh-poohed by some critics as trivially undeserving of a chronicler, but fortunate hitherto in finding a few readers willing to concede as much humanity to the "heroine in satin" as to the "confidante in linen." Of the other contents of this volume, "Out of Season" made its first appearance some time ago in _Two Tales_, and "On Frenchman's Bay" was published in _The Cosmopolitan Magazine_. C. C. H. NEW YORK, _November, 1895_ A Virginia Cousin Chapter I Mr. Theodore Vance Townsend awoke to the light of a spring morning in New York, feeling at odds with the world. The cause for this state of variance with existing circumstances was not at sight apparent. He was young, good-looking, well-born, well-mannered, and, to support these claims to favorable consideration, had come into the fortunes of a father and two maiden aunts,--a piece of luck that had, however, not secured for him the unqualified approbation of his fellow-citizens. Joined to the fact that, upon first leaving college, some years before, he had led a few _cotillons_ at New York balls, his wealth and leisure had brought upon Townsend the reproach of the metropolitan press to the extent that nothing short of his committing suicide would have induced it to look upon anything he did as in earnest. With an inherited love of letters, he had dabbled in literature so far as to write and publish a book of verse, of fair merit, which, however, had been received with tumultuous rhapsodies of satire by the professional critics. The style and title of "Laureate of the 400," applied in this connection, had indeed clung to him and made life hateful in his sight. To escape it and the other rubs of unoccupied solvency, he had made many journeys into foreign countries, had gone around the globe, and, in due course, had always come to the surface in New York again, with a sort of doglike attachment to the place of his birth that would not wear away.