As Mrs. Myrtle performed the ceremony of introduction between them, Vance became conscious that he was in the presence of one of the most radiantly pretty young persons who had ever crossed the line of his languid vision. Equipped in a tailor-made frock of gray serge, a black hat with many rampant plumes upon her red-brown hair, a boa of black ostrich feathers curling around her pearly throat and caressing the rosiest of cheeks, his Cousin Eve surveyed him with as much indifference as if he had been the veriest casual met in a crowd in Fifth Avenue. Two fingers of a tiny gloved hand were bestowed on him in recognition of their relationship, after which she resumed her interrupted talk about the dog.
"You understand that Mr. Townsend is a relative, my dear?" asked Mrs. Myrtle, in her rocking-horse manner. "You have heard me speak of him?"
"Yes; oh, yes, certainly," Eve said, with preoccupation. "But to us Virginians a cousin means either very much--or very, very little."
"The presumption, then, is against me?" he asked, determined not to be subdued.
"Is it? I had not thought," she answered, hardly looking in his direction. Vance took the hint and his departure. When again out of doors, he straightened himself, and walked with a firmer, more determined tread, conscious of a little tingling in his veins on the whole not disagreeable. In this mood, he reached the corner of the street in which dwelt Miss Ainger, and was very near indeed to passing it, but, recovering himself with a start, turned westward from the Avenue, and again sought the house from which he had gone irresolute a little while before.
The door was opened for him by a servant, who did not know "for sure," but "rather thought" Miss Ainger was in the drawing-room. While following the man across a wide hall, Vance espied, lying upon a chair, a man's hat--not the conventional high black hat of the afternoon caller, but a rusty brown "pot" hat, of an unobtrusive pattern.
"Humph! the piano-tuner, no doubt," he said to himself, and simultaneously recalled the fact that he had seen the object in question, or its twin brother, that same day. Before the footman could put his hand upon the knob of the drawing-room door, it opened, and the owner of the hat came out. It was indeed Crawford, dressed in morning tweeds, as Vance had seen him at luncheon in the Lawyers' Club, his plain, strong face illuminated with an expression Vance knew nothing akin to, and therefore did not interpret.