Her cousin’s arrival at the Lorimac House created all the sensation Mrs. Stilton Barnes could have wished. With the tact of a true diplomatist she had said but little about him beforehand. Expectations too fully roused, she well knew, were almost invariably doomed to disappointment. So she had merely told a few of her most particular friends that she expected a cousin of hers from New England. “A young artist,” she added, “who has recently lost his mother, so I shall not be expected to give him a gay time.” Men, of course, were scarce at this distance from the cities. There were any number of boys in their teens, and several dudes, who spent almost as much time as the ladies in devising new combinations of sash and hat bands, outing jackets and shirts. This fact had been uppermost in Camilla Barnes’s mind when she asked Radnor to come to Lorimac. She felt that he would tower head and shoulders above all the other males at the hotel. “And who knows but he may make a rich catch?” she even whispered to herself. It was a reversal of things, she knew, this exploiting of a man, but then the very uniqueness of the process added zest to it for this woman whose nature craved excitement of this sort above all other things. When Radnor’s train came in she walked across the road to the station to meet him. She had seen to it that he took the express, which would bring him to Lorimac just before the supper hour, when everybody was on the piazzas, looking out for the new arrivals. “You are very welcome, Radnor,” she said, when he came up to her amid the crowd. She gave him both her hands, forcing him to drop his valise while he took them for a moment. Then they walked across to the hotel together, and while he registered, Mrs. Barnes tapped her jeweled fingers together and glanced half carelessly around the great office, with its big fire place in one corner and the many groups scattered about. And she saw in that apparently casual glance all she wanted, and knew that the first impression Radnor had made was an extremely favorable one. That evening, however, she introduced him to no one. They sat together in a remote corner of the piazza, talking over old times, the future, the walks and drives around Lorimac. Radnor said but very little. It was not necessary. His cousin was fond of talking, and she certainly found Radnor a most attentive listener. The only fault she had to find with him was that he did not ask questions enough. There were dozens of pretty girls in the dining room at supper time, in a few of whom it might be supposed he would have some little interest. But he always allowed Camilla to speak of them first, except in one instance, and then he asked about a young lady whom she did not know and had not observed. “She came up on the train with me,” Radnor explained then, and Mrs. Barnes made a resolve to find out the entire facts about the new comer before she went to sleep that night.