“Feeling all right, my boy?” he inquired now, in the tone of indulgent anxiety which, from the first day of his return, had exasperated Stephen so profoundly.

“Oh, first rate,” responded the young man lightly.  “Is there anything you would like me to help you about?”

“No, there’s nothing I can’t attend to myself—­” Mr. Culpeper had begun to reply, when catching sight of his wife’s frowning face, he continued hurriedly:  “Unless you would care to glance over that deed about those lots of your mother’s?”

Stephen smiled, for he had seen the warning change in his mother’s expression, and he was thinking that she was still a remarkably pretty woman.  “With pleasure,” he returned.  “I shall be busy all day, but I’ll look it over to-morrow.  To-night I am going to the Harrisons’ dance.”

“Oh, you’re going!” exclaimed Mary Byrd, who had come in late and was just taking her seat.  “I suppose Mother is making you take Margaret Blair?”

Again Mrs. Culpeper made a vague frowning movement of her eyebrows and gently shook her head; but the gesture of disapproval to which her husband had responded obediently was entirely wasted upon her youngest daughter.  “You needn’t shake your head at me, Mother,” she remarked lightly.  “Of course I know you are making him take her when he would rather a hundred times go with Patty Vetch.”

The frown on Mrs. Culpeper’s face turned to a look of panic.  “Mary Byrd, you are impossible,” she said sternly.

“I saw Cousin Corinna yesterday,” observed Victoria indiscreetly.  “She is going to take Patty Vetch.”

Mrs. Culpeper said nothing, but her fine black brows drew ominously together.  She had worked so busily over the coffee urn and the sugar bowl that she had not had time to eat her breakfast, and the oatmeal in the plate before her had grown stiff and cold before she tasted it.  When Stephen stooped to kiss her cheek before going out, she looked up at him with a proud and admiring glance.  “I hope you remembered to order flowers for Margaret?”

He laughed.  It was so characteristic of her to feel that even his love affairs must be managed!  “Yes, I ordered gardenias.  Is that right?”

When she nodded amiably, he turned away and went out into the hall, where he found his father waiting.  “I wanted to see you a minute without your mother,” explained Mr. Culpeper, in a voice which sounded husky because he tried to subdue it to a whisper.  “It’s just as well, I think, that your mother shouldn’t know that I’m having those houses you looked at attended to.”

“Oh, you are!” returned Stephen, with a curious mixture of thankfulness and humility.  So the old chap was the best sport of them all!  In his slow way he had accomplished what Stephen had merely talked about.  For the first time it occurred to the young man that his father was not by any means so obvious or so simple as he had believed him to be.  Had Corinna spoken the truth when she called him a sentimentalist at heart?