Mary Byrd tossed her bright head as gaily as if a compliment had been intended.  “Oh, you needn’t think I like to dress this way,” she retorted, “or that I don’t sometimes get tired of keeping up with things.  Why, there are hours and hours when I simply feel as if I should drop.”

“Well, as long as you look like that you needn’t hope for a change,” remarked Stephen admiringly.  Then, turning his gaze away from her too obvious brightness, he looked into the tranquil depths of Margaret’s blue eyes, and thought how much more restful the old-fashioned type of woman must have been.  Men didn’t need to bestir themselves and sharpen their wits with women like that; they were accepted, with their inherent virtues or vices, as philosophically as one accepted the seasons.

It was a dull supper, he thought, because his mind was distracted; but a little later, when they had returned to the drawing-room, and the family had drifted away in separate directions—­Mary Byrd and Peyton to a dance, his father to his library, and his mother and the three other girls to a game of bridge in the next room, he received an amazing revelation of Margaret’s point of view.  His sentiment for the girl had always suffered, he was aware, from too many opportunities.  He had sometimes wished that an obstacle might arise, that the formidable parents would try for once to tear them apart instead of thrust them together, but, in spite of the changeless familiarity of their association, he was presently to discover how little he had known of the real Margaret beneath the flowing grace and the nut-brown hair and the eyes like blue larkspur.  Though the tribal customs had shaped her body and formed her manners, a rare essence of personality escaped like a perfume from the hereditary mould of the race.

As he looked at her now, sitting gracefully on the ruby brocade of one of the rosewood chairs, with her lovely head framed by the band of intricate carving, he was aware that the delicate subtleties and shadings of her feminine charm made an entirely fresh appeal to his perceptions, if not to his senses.  He had never admired her appearance more than he did at that instant; and yet his gaze was as dispassionate as the one he bestowed on the Sully portrait of which she reminded him.  Her eyes were very soft; there was a faint smile on her thin pink lips which gave the look of coldness, of reticence to her face.  With her head bent and her hands folded in her lap, she sat there waiting pensively—­for what?  It occurred to him suddenly with a shock that she was deeper, far deeper than he had ever suspected.

“You are so different from the other girls, Margaret,” he said at last, oppressed by the old difficulty of making conversation.  “You don’t belong to the same world with Mary Byrd and—­” He was going to add “Patty Vetch,” but he checked himself before the name escaped him.

She seemed to melt rather than break from her attitude of waiting, so gently did her movements sink into the shadowy glow of the firelight.