"She is merely playing at my request," said Mr. De Vere, "but if it is distasteful to Miss Kennedy, we will of course desist," and bending low he said a few words of commendation to Maude, whose heart thrilled to the gentle tones of his voice, just as many another maiden's had done before. Mr. De Vere was exceedingly agreeable, and so Maude found him to be, for feeling intuitively that she was somewhat slighted by the overbearing Nellie, he devoted himself to her entirely, talking first of books, then of music, and lastly of his home, which, without any apparent boasting, he described as a most beautiful spot.
For a long time that night did Louis wait for his sister in his little bed, and when at last she came to give him her accustomed kiss he pushed the thick curls from off her face and said, "I never saw you look so happy, Maude. Do you like that Mr. De Vere?"
"Which one?" asked Maude. "There are two, you know."
"Yes, I know," returned Louis, "but I mean the one with the voice.
Forgive me, Maude, but I sat ever so long at the head of the stairs, listening as he talked. He is a good man, I am sure. Will you tell me how he looks?"
Maude could not well describe him. She only knew that he was taller than J.C., and, as she thought, much finer looking, with deep blue eyes, dark brown hair, and a mouth just fitted to his voice. Farther than this she could not tell. "But you will see him in the morning," she said. "I have told him how gifted, how good, you are, and to-morrow, he says, he shall visit you in your den."
"Don't let the other one come," said Louis hastily, "for if he can't endure red hands he'd laugh at my withered feet and the bunch upon my back; but the other one won't, I know."
Maude knew so too, and somewhat impatiently she waited for the morrow, when she could introduce her brother to her friend. The morrow came, but, as was frequently the case, Louis was suffering from a severe pain in his back, which kept him confined to his room, so that Mr. De Vere neither saw him at all nor Maude as much as he wished to do. He had been greatly interested in her, and when at dinner he heard that she would not be down he was conscious of a feeling of disappointment. She was not present at supper either, but after it was over she joined him in the parlor, and, together with J.C. and Nellie, accompanied him to the graveyard, where, seating herself upon her mother's grave, she told him of that mother, and the desolation which crept into her heart when first she knew she was an orphan. From talking of her mother it was an easy matter to speak of her Vernon home, which she had never seen since she left it twelve years before, and then Mr. De Vere asked if she had met two boys in the cars on her way to Albany. At first Maude could not recall them, and when at last she did so her recollections were so vague that Mr. De Vere felt another pang of disappointment, though wherefore he could not tell, unless indeed, he thought there would be something pleasant in being remembered twelve long years by a girl like Maude Remington. He reminded her of her remark made to his cousin, and in speaking of him casually alluded to his evident liking for Nellie, saying playfully, "Who knows, Miss Remington, but you may some time be related to me--not my cousin exactly, though Cousin Maude sounds well. I like that name."
"I like it too," she said impulsively, "much better than Miss Remington, which seems so stiff."
"Then let me call you so. I have no girl cousin in the world," and leaning forward he put back from her forehead one of her short, glossy curls, which had been displaced by the evening breeze.
This was a good deal for him to do. Never before had he touched a maiden's tresses, and he had no idea that it would make his fingers tingle as it did. Still, on the whole, he liked it, and half-wished the wind would blow those curls over the upturned face again, but it did not, and he was about to make some casual remark when J.C., who was not far distant, called out, "Making love, I do believe!"
