Mrs. Graham had proposed spending the winter in New Orleans, but to this Durward objected. He wanted ’Lena all to himself, he said, and as she seemed perfectly satisfied to remain where she was, the project was given up, Mrs. Graham contenting herself with anticipating the splendid entertainment she would give at the wedding, which was to take place about the last of March. Toward the first of January the preparations began, and if Carrie had never before felt a pang of envy, she did now, when she saw the elegant trousseau which Mr. Graham ordered for his daughter. But all such feelings must be concealed, and almost every day she rode over to Woodlawn, admiring this, going into ecstasies over that, and patronizingly giving her advice on all subjects, while all the time her heart was swelling with bitter disappointment. Having always felt so sure of securing Durward, she had invariably treated other gentlemen with such cool indifference that she was a favorite with but few, and as she considered these few her inferiors, she had more than once feared lest John Jr.’s prediction concerning the _lettering_ on her tombstone should prove true! “Anything but that,” said she, dashing away her tears, as she thought how ’Lena had supplanted her in the affections of the only person she could ever love, “Old Marster Atherton done want to see you in the parlor,” said Corinda, putting her head in at the door. Since his unfortunate affair with Anna, the captain had avoided Maple Grove, but feeling lonely at Sunnyside, he had come over this morning to call. Finding Mrs. Livingstone absent, he had asked for Carrie, who was so unusually gracious that he wondered he had never before discovered how greatly superior to her sister she was! All his favorite pieces were sung to him, and then, with the patience of a martyr, the young lady seated herself at the backgammon board, playing game after game, until she could scarcely tell her men from his. On his way home the captain fell into a curious train of reflections, while Carrie, when asked by Corinda, if “old marster was done gone,” sharply reprimanded the girl, telling her “it was very impolite to call anybody _old_, particularly one so young as Captain Atherton!” The next day the captain came again, and the next, and the next, until at last his former intimacy at Maple Grove seemed to be re-established. And all this time no one had an inkling of the true state of things, not even John Jr., who never dreamed it possible for his haughty sister, to grace Sunnyside as its mistress. “But stranger things than that had happened and were happening every day,” Carrie reasoned, as she sat alone in her room, revolving the propriety of answering “Yes” to a note which the captain had that morning placed in her hand at parting. She looked at herself in the mirror. Her face was very fair, and as yet untouched by a single mark or line. She thought of him, _bald_, _wrinkled_, _fat_ and _forty-six_!