Later, Alexina chanced to refer to Major Rathbone. She spoke enthusiastically, for she either liked people or she did not like them. "Hadn't you heard about him?" asked Emily in surprise. "He met Miss Harriet two years ago, and he's been coming ever since. It's funny, too, that he should. He's _the_ Major Rathbone, you know--"

But Alexina looked unenlightened.

"Why," said Emily, "the Major Rathbone who was the Confederate guerrilla--the one who captured and burned a train-load of stuff your grandfather and Mr. Austen had contracted to deliver for the government. I've heard people tell about it a dozen different ways since he's been coming to see Miss Harriet. Anyway, however it was, the government at the time put a price on his head and your grandfather and Mr. Austen doubled it. And now they say he's in love with Miss Harriet!"

In love! With Aunt Harriet! Alexina grew hot. Aunt Harriet! She felt strange and queer. But Emily was saying more. "Mr. Blair and Major Rathbone aren't friends even yet; I was here to supper with Miss Harriet one evening last winter, and Mr. Blair was furious over an editorial by Major Rathbone in the paper that day about some political appointments from Washington. Mr. Blair had had something to do with them, had been consulted about them from Washington, it seems. Major Rathbone's a Catholic, too."

It rushed upon Alexina that she had spoken to the Major of a family discussion over his editorials.

Emily stayed until dusk. As Alexina went down to the door with her, they met Uncle Austen just coming in. He stopped, shook hands, and asked how matters were in the choir.

As Emily ran down the steps he addressed himself to his niece. "A praiseworthy young girl to have gone so practically to work." Then as Emily at the gate looked back, nodding archly, he repeated it. "A praiseworthy young girl, praiseworthy and sensible," his gaze following her, "as well as handsome."

He went in, but Alexina lingered on the broad stone steps. It was October and the twilight was purple and hazy. Chrysanthemums bloomed against the background of the shrubbery; the maples along the street were drifting leaves upon the sidewalk; the sycamores stood with their shed foliage like a cast garment about their feet, raising giant white limbs naked to heaven.

There were lights in the wide brick cottage. Strangers lived there now. A swinging sign above the gate set forth that a Doctor Ransome dwelt therein.

The eddying fall of leaves is depressing. Autumn anyhow is a melancholy time. Alexina, going in, closed the door.

CHAPTER TWO

The Blair reception to introduce their niece may have been to others the usual matter of lights and flowers and music, but to the niece it was different, for it was her affair.

She and her aunt went down together. The stairway was broad, and to-night its banister trailed roses.

Alexina was radiant. She even marched up and kissed her uncle. Things felt actually festive.

All the little social world was there that evening. Alexina recalled many of the girls and the older women; of the older men she knew a few, but of the younger only one could she remember as knowing.

He was a rosy-cheeked youth with vigorous, curling yellow hair, and he came up to her with a hearty swinging of the body, smiling in a friendly and expectant way, showing nice, square teeth, boyishly far apart. She knew him at once; he had gone to dancing school when she did, and she was glad to see him.

"Why, Georgy," she said, and held out a hand, just as it was borne in upon her that Georgy wore a young down on his lip and was a man.

"Oh," she said, blushing, "I hope you don't mind?"

He was blushing, too, but the smile that showed his nice s.p.a.ced teeth was honest.

"No," he said; "I don't mind."

Which Alexina felt was good of him and so she smiled back and chatted and tried to make it up. And Georgy lingered and continued to linger and to blush beneath his already ruddy skin until Harriet, turning, sent him away, for Harriet was a woman of the world and Georgy was the rich and only child of the richest mamma present, and the other mammas were watching.

Alexina's eyes followed him as he went, then wandered across the long room to Emily. She had expected to feel a sense of responsibility about Emily, but Uncle Austen, after a long and precise survey of her from across the room, put his eye-gla.s.ses into their case and went to her. His prim air of unbending for the festive occasion was almost comical as he brought up youths to make them known. This done he fell back to his general duties as host.

But Alexina, watching Emily, felt dissatisfaction with her, her archness was overdone, her laughter was anxious.

Why should Emily stoop to strive so? With her milk-white skin and chestnut hair, with her red lips and starry eyes there should have belonged to her a pride and a young dignity. Alexina, youthfully stern, turned away.

It brought her back to the amusing things of earth, however, that Uncle Austen should take Emily home when it was over. Would Emily be arch with Uncle Austen? Picture it!

Several of the older men lingered after the other guests were gone, and they, with Harriet and Alexina, had coffee in the library. The orderliness of the room, compared with the dishevelled appearance elsewhere now the occasion was over, seemed cheerful, and these men friends of Aunt Harriet were interesting. The talk was personal, as among intimates. The local morning paper, opposed to Major Rathbone's own, it seemed, had taxed the Major with aspiring to be the next nominee of his party for Congress. And this was proving occasion for much banter at his expense by the other men, for the truth was the Major _was_ being considered as a possibility, but a possibility tempered, for one thing, by the fact that his guerrilla past shed a somewhat lurid light upon his exemplary present.

"But why want to keep it secret as if it were something dark and plotting?" insisted Harriet Blair. "Why not come right out and admit your willingness if your party wants you?"

The men laughed in varying degrees of delight at this feminine perspicacity. The Major regarded her with somewhat comical humour, looking a little shamefaced, though he was laughing too. "For the fear my party can't afford to have me," he answered. "It takes money. They are casting about for a richer available man first, and, that failing, why--"

Here Austen Blair came in, bringing a breath of the November chill. Or was it his own personality that brought the chill, Alexina wondered.

For, to do him justice, there was a distinction, a fine coldness, a bearing about him which distinguished him in any company.

Promptly on his coming the group broke up. The others pa.s.sed into the hall to hunt overcoats, but the Major paused to address Harriet, who had risen and was looking at him as he spoke. There was colour in her face, and light.

"Friday evening, then," he was saying, "you will go with me to hear Benton lecture?"

Austen, who had taken a cup of coffee from Alexina, looked up sharply.

He put the cup down.

Harriet smiled acquiescence. "Friday evening," she agreed.

Later, in the hall, as the outer door shut behind the group of departing men, Austen turned on his sister, his nostrils tense with dilation.

"Do you realize what you are doing?" he asked. "Have you utterly lost sight of how this man was regarded by your father, if you prefer to put consideration for me out of the matter?"

Harriet continued to unfasten her long glove. The colour was gone from her face, and the light, but otherwise she stood outwardly serene.

"The fight was fair," she said calmly, "and also mutual."

Her brother regarded her fixedly, then he spoke. "Though what there is to be gained in thus setting yourself in opposition to my repeatedly expressed wishes I do not"--all at once two steely points seemed to leap into the blue intensity of his gaze--"unless--in Heaven's name, Harriet, is it possible that you mean to--"

"Mean to what?" she repeated. Harriet was meeting his eyes with a look as unflinching as his. She seemed unconsciously to have drawn herself to her full, superb height, but she had grown white as her gown.

He suddenly resumed his usual manner. "Take the child on to bed," he said, glancing at Alexina standing startled, looking from one to the other. "This is no time to have the matter out."

"I agree with you quite," said his sister, and held out a hand to the girl. Alexina took it quickly, impulsively, and held to it as they went up the garlanded stairway, which suddenly looked tawdry and garish. In the hall above the girl lifted Harriet's hand and put her cheek against it, then almost ran in at her own door.

CHAPTER THREE

The Blairs met about the breakfast table next morning at the usual time; a matter of four hours for sleep instead of eight would have been insufficient excuse to Austen for further upsetting of routine; and there was none of the chit-chat that would seem natural on a morning following the giving of a large social affair.

Aunt Harriet was dumb and Uncle Austen tense, or so it seemed to the third and youngest Blair about the board. She had been conscious of sharp interchange checked as she entered. Uncle Austen even forgot to look up at her interrogatively as she came in, though she was a moment late.

Was the trouble still about the Major? Was Aunt Harriet determined to go with him Friday evening?