Mrs. Myrtle's heavy tread upon her own parquet floor aroused him from meditation. His aunt was a massive lady, who wore black velvet, with a neck-ruff of old point-lace; who, never pretty, and no longer pleasant to look upon, yet carried herself with a certain ease born of assurance in her own place in life, and cultivated by many years of receiving visitors. Her small white hand, twinkling with diamonds, was extended to him with something of the grand air he remembered his mother, who was the beauty of her family, to have possessed; and then Mrs. Myrtle, seating herself, fixed an unsmiling gaze upon her nephew. "I--ah--thought I would look in and see how you are getting on," he said, with an attempt at jocularity. "But it is not Thursday," she answered, cold as before. "I make it a point to see no one except on Thursday, or after five. And it is not yet after five." Townsend, who could not dispute this fact, was at a loss how to go on. But Mrs. Myrtle, having put things upon the right footing, launched at once into an exposition of her grievances against him, his sister, and the ruling society of latter-day New York. "I am sure if any one had told your mother and me, when we first came out, what people were to push _us_ against the wall, and to have all New York racing and tearing after their invitations, we should never have believed it. It's enough to make your poor mother come back from the dead, to revise Anita Clifton's visiting-list. And I suppose the next thing to hear of will be your marriage into one of these bran-new families. I must say, Theodore, although it is seldom my opinion is listened to, I _was_ pleased when I heard, the other day, that you were reported engaged to Katherine Ainger. The Aingers are of our own sort; and her fortune, although it is not so important to you, will be handsome. She is one of the few girls who go much into the world who still remember to come to see me; and she has been lunching here to-day." "Really?" said Vance, turning over his hat in what he felt to be a most perfunctory way. "Yes; if you or Anita Clifton had been here in the last two months, you might have found out that I have had a young lady--a Southern cousin--stopping in the house." "A cousin of mine?" queried the young man, indifferently. "My first cousin's daughter, Evelyn Carlyle. You know there was a break between the families about the beginning of the war, and, for one reason or another, we have hardly met since. When I went to the Hot Springs for my rheumatism last year,--you and Anita Clifton doubtless are not aware that I have been a great sufferer from rheumatism,--I stopped a night or two at Colonel Carlyle's house in Virginia, and took rather a fancy to this girl. I found out that she has a voice, and desired to cultivate it in New York, and so invited her to come on after Christmas and stay in my house."