"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
