“Ah, you do not know Virginia cousins,” answered Constance. “Nobody yet was ever known to want for company in Virginia. The two days I was at Malvern it rained cousins. Each one had to be treated with distinguished consideration, and after I had worn myself out with civility to them--for they were coming all day and half the night to call on me--Cousin Phillis gently intimated to me that if I wasn’t more attentive to my relations I might find myself very unpopular with them; and I find that in Virginia to be unpopular with one’s relations is to be an outcast. They regard me with great suspicion; my Louisiana ways and my Louisiana accent only half please them; and they seem to think me a very forgetful person because I do not remember every birth and death in the family which occurred during the seventy or eighty years that the Maitlands have been established in Louisiana. I hope,” she continued, smiling, “that you will have the opportunity to meet some of my Virginia cousins. I shall have a great many house-parties during the summer, and you are among those I shall invite. I hope you may accept.” “I accept now,” replied Thorndyke, and in a breath his trip to Europe melted away and was as if it had never been. Then Thorndyke very artfully found out the hour of her departure, which was to be three days later. When Constance, on a warm June morning, arrived at the station, with her five negro servants and her household and personal paraphernalia, to start for her summer in Virginia, she found Thorndyke waiting for her. In the station he had met Annette Crane, who had just seen a constituent off on the train. At the same moment they caught sight of Constance. “Come,” said Thorndyke, “go with me and say good-bye to Miss Maitland. She is a real friend of yours, and I know she will be glad to see you before she goes.” “I feel that she is a real friend,” answered Annette. “I never knew a woman in whom I felt greater confidence.” “Constance is a very loyal and a very large-minded woman,” replied Thorndyke, absently. He had used her first name inadvertently, and only became conscious of it when Annette began laughing softly. Then he coloured violently, and explained that he had lost his mind, or lost his manners, or something of the sort, to account for his calling Miss Maitland by her first name.