WHEN Mrs. Gaston and Miss Trevennon were driving along the avenue next morning, the former said , “Why didn’t you tell me of your cousin’s visit?”  
“Oh, I didn’t see you when you came in, you know,” answered Margaret evasively. “Who told you?”
 
“Louis: and I gathered from certain indications that there had been something unpleasant in this meeting. I didn’t ask him to explain it to me, and I don’t ask you. I hate explanations. I have always foreseen that a certain amount of clashing was between you and Louis. You are both very well in your ways, but your ways are very different and not very reconcilable. I am very sorry anything of the sort happened; but I don’t let it upon my mind, and I hope you will not either.”
 
“Oh no,” said Margaret; “it was nothing very important. Mr. Gaston was rude to Alan when he first came in, but he for it as far as he could .”
 
At this moment a handsome drag containing two gentlemen and a liveried servant was seen approaching, and, as it came up to them, one of the gentlemen recognized Margaret with a bow and a smile.
 
“There’s Alan now!” said Margaret. “I wonder who the gentleman is, who is driving.”
 
“It’s young Lord Waring,” said Mrs. Gaston, with . “He is attached to the British Legation—the minister’s nephew, I believe. And so that was Alan Decourcy! What a charming young man! I wonder how Louis could be rude to a man like that.”
 
It was Margaret’s usual habit to pass over such remarks as this from Cousin Eugenia, as she was convinced of the fruitlessness of argument in her case; but this speech touched her on such a sore point that she could not help saying, in rather keen tones:
 
“A man who could be rude to any one whomsoever, must be somewhat difficult to count upon, I should think. He must be often puzzled to decide whom to treat civilly and whom to snub.”
 
“Oh, there you go, with your high-flown Southern notions,” retorted Mrs. Gaston, with good-humor. “You’re your father’s own child! But we must have this elegant young man to dinner. Do you happen to know if he is engaged for this evening?”
 
“No,” said Margaret, “I didn’t hear him say.”
 
“He will probably call during the day.”
 
“No, he will not,” said Margaret, decidedly. “He told me he should not see me again before going to Baltimore. But he is to make arrangements for me to go over for a little visit soon, and I shall see him then.”
 
“Nonsense! He’s to come and see you at my house, and he’s to make friends with us all. Louis has been in the wrong, and he shall be made to see it. Leave that to me. I shall write young Decourcy a note as soon as I get home; and you shall write too, and my invitation.”
 
Margaret felt very anxious that her cousin should come and dine at the Gastons’, but she seriously doubted his willingness to do so. Despite his perfect courtesy, there had been something in his manner toward Louis Gaston that made it clear that he did not desire to improve the latter’s acquaintance, and she wanted him to see that in the interview he had had with Gaston he had seen Louis at his worst, and to realize that he had a better side. And, on the other hand, she wanted the Gastons to see Alan Decourcy as a of a Southern gentleman, who not only , by inheritance, all the instincts and traditions that she clung to and respected, but who, in addition to these, had had sufficient contact with the world to get rid of that belief in himself and his own methods and manners, as the only ones, which she felt to be one of the chief failings of her countrymen. She had been too long accustomed to the assumption that a Southern man had better take the wrong way in any issue than learn the right way from a Yankee, not to rejoice in the of presenting to her friends a young Southerner who was really enlightened, and who, if he loved his own land best, did so because he had compared it with others, and not because he was ignorant of everything beyond it.
 
But when Mrs. Gaston had despatched her note, Mr. Decourcy to dine with them that evening at six, and there came a response regretting that a previous engagement for dinner prevented his accepting her invitation, Mrs. Gaston was quite provoked about it, and when they were at dinner she her disappointment to her husband and his brother.
 
“I called on him at the Arlington, this morning,” said Louis, “but he was out.”
 
“Yes, we met him,” said Mrs. Gaston. “He was driving with Lord Waring.”
 
Margaret felt a little of gratification, as her cousin made this announcement, of which she was deeply ashamed the next instant. “I am getting the most ideas into my head,” she said to herself; “what a little I should have felt myself two months ago, to be filled with vulgar at the thought of Alan Decourcy being seen driving with a lord! It’s humiliating!” But all the same, the satisfaction remained.
 
“I wonder where he is going to dine,” Mrs. Gaston went on, presently. “He will call, of course, in acknowledgment of my invitation, and when he does, Margaret, you must ask him.”
 
The next morning he did call, and Mrs. Gaston and Margaret were at home to receive him. Margaret asked him, in the course of their talk, where he h............