“Of course, Eugenia, it goes without saying, that when you have a young guest in the house my services are at your disposal.” “Oh, certainly. Only, in this instance, I prefer to let all suggestions come from yourself. I know you only put up with my Southern relatives because of your regard for me, and, strong as is my faith in that sentiment, I don’t want to test it too severely; but I won’t detain you. Mrs. Gaston and Miss Trevennon accept with pleasure Mr. Gaston’s kind invitation for Monday evening. The opera is _Favorita_--isn’t it? Margaret has never heard it, I know; it will be very nice to initiate her. Will you be at home to dinner to-day?” “Yes, of course,” replied the young man, looking back over his shoulder as he walked away. “Oh, of course!” soliloquized his sister-in-law, as she turned back into her apartment. “Quite as if you were never known to do otherwise! Oh, the men! How facile they are! Louis, as well as the rest! I had expected something to come of this case of propinquity, but I did _not_ expect it to come so quickly. He hasn’t dined out more than twice since she’s been here, and then with visible reluctance, and he has only been once to New York, and I suspect the designs are suffering. And Margaret too! It’s quite the same with her--saying to me last night that his manners are so fine that she is constrained to admit that, taking Louis as an exponent of the Northern system, it must be better than the one she had always supposed to be the best! It works rapidly both ways, but there must be a hitch before long, for in reality they are as far asunder as the poles. Every tradition and every prejudice of each is diametrically opposed to the other. How _will_ it end, I wonder?” It happened that Mrs. Gaston did an unusual amount of shopping and visiting that day, and was so fatigued in consequence that she had dinner served to her in her own apartment, and Margaret dined alone with the two gentlemen. Afterward she went up and spent an hour with the vivacious invalid, whom she found lying on the bed, surrounded by an array of paper novels by miscellaneous authors, the titles of which were of such a flashy and trashy order that Margaret felt sure she would never have cared to turn the first page of any of them, and wondered much that her intelligent and cultivated cousin could find the least interest in their contents. Mrs. Gaston was in the habit of ridiculing these novels herself, but would say, with a laugh, that they were “the greatest rest to her,” and Margaret was continually expecting to find her immersed in some abstruse work, which would sufficiently tax her mental powers to account for the liberal allowance of relaxation which was to counteract it; but, so far, she had been disappointed.