Yet she cast a glance into the mirror as she spoke, and seeing that her bonnet was even then a point off the compa.s.s she forebore to change it.
Such graceful yielding to flattery was in itself a charm. But the thing about Mrs. Winchester, which proved a never-failing source of amus.e.m.e.nt to the laughter-loving, was her amusing habit of miscalling words. She habitually interpolated into her sentences words beginning with the same letter as the term she had intended, as if her brain had been switched off before completing its thought and her tongue did the best it could, left without a guide.
"Carolina," she would say, "come and look up Zurich on the map for me; I can"t see without my gloves."
In her hours of greatest depression this trait never failed to amuse Carolina, and when, on one occasion, Cousin Lois took the tissue-paper from around a new bonnet, folded the paper carefully and put it in the hat-box and threw the bonnet in the waste-basket, Carolina laughed herself into hysterics.
Carolina was genuinely fond of Cousin Lois, but it must be confessed that one great secret of her attractiveness for the girl was because much of Cousin Lois"s early childhood had been spent at Guildford, when she had been a ward of General Lee"s, and thus had met his nephew, Rhett Winchester, whom she afterward married.
Thus, while not related to their immediate family, Cousin Lois was inextricably mixed up with their history and knew all the traditions which Carolina so prized.
Although Mrs. Winchester deplored Carolina"s persistence in so dwelling upon the past and brooding over her loss, nothing ever really interested this girl except to talk about her father or the golden days of Guildford.
She cared nothing for her wealth. She shifted the burden of investing it upon Sherman"s shoulders, and refused even to read his reports upon its earnings.
Admirers failed to interest her for the reason that she was unable to believe that they sought her for herself alone. Her fortune had the effect upon her of keeping her modest concerning her own great beauty.
But grief and a rooted discontent with everything life has to offer will mar the rarest beauty and undermine the most robust health, and the change struck Colonel Yancey with such force when he met them in Rome that he became almost explosive to Mrs. Winchester.
"The girl is losing her beauty, madam!" he said. "Look at the healthful glow of your complexion and then look at her pale face! Her eyes used to dance! Her lips were all smiles! Her cheeks were like two roses!
And what do I find now? A sneer on that perfect mouth! Coldness, cruelty, if you like, in those eyes! Why, madam, it is a sin for so beautiful a creature as Miss Carolina to destroy herself in this way.
She might as well shoot herself and be done with it! What does she want?"
"She wants what she can never have, Colonel Yancey," said Mrs.
Winchester, sadly. "Carolina wants her father to come back."
"We all want that, madam!" said the colonel, gravely. "I no less than the others. His loss never grows less."
When Cousin Lois repeated this conversation to Carolina, she laughed at what he said about her beauty, but flushed with grat.i.tude at his praise of her father, and was so kind to the colonel for two days afterward that he proposed to her again and so fell from grace, as he persisted in doing with somewhat annoying regularity.
They travelled for another year, and Carolina grew no better. She seldom complained, but her lack of interest in everything, added to her restless love of change, preyed upon Mrs. Winchester.
They were in Bombay when this restlessness got beyond control.
"I am not happy!" she cried, pa.s.sionately, "and knowing I ought to be is what makes me even more miserable!"
"What you need is a good dose of America," said Cousin Lois, decidedly.
"You are homesick!"
"I believe I am!" she answered, with brightening eyes. "I am homesick, though, for something in America which I"ve never found there."
"You are homesick for South Carolina," said Cousin Lois, with timid daring.
At these words a look came into Carolina"s eyes which half-frightened Mrs. Winchester, for Carolina had suddenly recalled her father"s words.
"My dearest wish is to restore Guildford, and pa.s.s the remainder of my days in the old place."
Instantly her life-work spread itself out before her. Here was the solution to all her restlessness, the answer to all her questionings of Fate, the link which could bind her closer to her beloved father! If he could have spoken, she knew that he would have urged her to give her life, if need be, to the restoration of Guildford.
Her interest in existence returned with a gush. A new light gleamed in her eyes. A new smile wreathed her too scornful lips. Her face was irradiated by the first look of love which Cousin Lois had seen upon it since her father"s death.
They began to pack in an hour.
CHAPTER III.
THE DANGER OF WISHING
The Lees" dinner-table was round, and about it were gathered six people--Sherman and his wife, Carolina, Mrs. Winchester, Noel St.
Quentin, and Kate Howard, Carolina"s most intimate girl friend. It was the first time they had all met since the return of the travellers from India. Later they were going to hear Melba in "Faust," but there was no hurry. It was only nine o"clock.
"Carolina, if you could have the dearest wish of your heart, what would it be?" asked Noel St. Quentin.
"If I should tell, it might not come true," Carolina answered. "And I want it so much!"
"I never saw such a girl as Carolina in all my life," complained her sister-in-law. "Her mind is always made up. She keeps her ideas as orderly as an old maid"s bureau-drawer. No odds and ends anywhere. You may ask her any sort of a question, and she has her answer ready. She knows just what box in her brain it is in. Just fancy having thought out what your wish would be, and having it at your tongue"s end to tell at a dinner-party!"
Mrs. Lee leaned back and fanned herself with a fatigued air.
"You almost indicate that Carolina thinks," said St. Quentin.
"Oh, don"t accuse me of such a crime in public!" cried the girl, laughing.
"Carolina seems to me the one person on earth whose every wish had been gratified before it could be uttered," said St. Quentin, who was in some occult way related to the Lees. "I would be interested to know just what her dream in life could be."
Carolina smiled at him gently.
"She--she"s had Europe, Asia, and Africa a-all her life," cried Kate Howard, who always stuttered a little in the excitement of the moment.
To Carolina this slight stutter was one of Kate"s greatest fascinations.
You found yourself expecting and rather looking forward to it. At least it spelled enthusiasm. "She"s had masters in every known accomplishment. She--she can do all sorts of things. She can speak any language except Chinese, I do believe. She"s pretty. She"s rich in her own right--no waiting for dead men"s shoes or trying to get along on an allowance--a-and what under the sun can she want--e-except a husband?"
"Perhaps, if she"s good, she may even get that," said St. Quentin.
Again Carolina smiled. But her smile faded when her eyes met those of her sister-in-law, who viewed the girl with a thinly veiled dislike.
The girl"s eyes flashed. Then she spoke.
"I have wanted one thing so much that I am sure sometime I must achieve it," she said, slowly. "I want to be so poor that I shall be forced to earn my own living with no help from anybody!"
She was not looking at her brother as she spoke, or she would have seen him start so violently that he upset his champagne-gla.s.s, and that his face had turned white.
"What did I tell you?" murmured St. Quentin.
"Carol likes to be sensational," said Mrs. Lee. "No one would dislike to be poor more than she, and no one would find herself more utterly helpless and dependent, if such a calamity were to overtake her."
"I wouldn"t call it a calamity," said Carolina, quietly.