There was, too, about her a certain gentleness, a certain disposition to be kind, even when her inherent coquetry—­natural in the Southern girl—­led her into deep waters; a certain tenderness that made friends of even unhappy suitors (and I heard that she could not count them on her fingers) who had asked for more than she could give—­a tenderness which healed the wound and made lovers of them all for life.

And then her Southern speech, indescribable and impossible in cold type.  The softening of the consonants, the slipping away of the terminals, the slurring of vowels, and all in that low, musical voice born out side of the roar and crash of city streets and crowded drawing-rooms with each tongue fighting for mastery.

All this Jack had taken in, besides a thousand other charms visible only to the young enthusiast, before he had been two minutes in her presence.  As to her voice, he knew she was one of his own people when she had finished pronouncing his name.  Somebody worthwhile had crossed his path at last!

And with this there had followed, even as he talked to her, the usual comparisons made by all young fellows when the girl they don’t like is placed side by side with the girl they do.  Miss MacFarlane was tall and Corinne was short; Miss MacFarlane was dark, and he adored dark, handsome people—­and Corinne was light; Miss MacFarlane’s voice was low and soft, her movements slow and graceful, her speech gentle—­as if she were afraid she might hurt someone inadvertently; her hair and dress were simple to severity.  While Corinne—­well, in every one of these details Corinne represented the exact opposite.  It was the blood!  Yes, that was it—­it was her blood!  Who was she, and where did she come from?  Would Corinne like her?  What impression would this high bred Southern beauty make upon the pert Miss Wren, whose little nose had gone down a point or two when her mother had discovered, much to her joy, the week before, that it was the real Miss Grayson and not an imitation Miss Grayson who had been good enough to invite her daughter and any of her daughter’s friends to tea; and it had fallen another point when she learned that Miss Felicia had left her card the next day, expressing to the potato-bug how sorry she was to hear that the ladies were out, but that she hoped it would only be a matter of a few days before “she would welcome them” to her own apartments, or words to that effect, Frederick’s memory being slightly defective.

It was in answer to this request that Mrs. Breen, after consulting her husband, had written three acceptances before she was willing that Frederick should leave it with his own hands in Fifteenth Street—­one beginning, “It certainly is a pleasure after all these years”—­which was discarded as being too familiar; another, “So good of you, dear Miss Grayson,” which had a similar fate; and the third, which ran, “My daughter will be most happy, dear Miss Grayson, to be with you,” etc., which was finally sealed with the Breen crest—­a four-legged beastie of some kind on its hind legs, with a motto explanatory of the promptness of his ancestors in times of danger.  Even then Corinne had hesitated about accepting until Garry said:  “Well, let’s take it in, anyhow—­we can skip out if they bore us stiff.”