..."
"Stop it, Basil! You make me feel old, antique, antediluvian. I don't want
to. I shan't let myself be pushed back and ignored. I'm going to give Amy
and George a rousing big dinner before long; and when the fall term opens I
shall entertain as never before. And if that young man from the South turns
up here during the summer to see Hortense, I shall do a lot for them."
Hortense Dunton had long since returned, of course, from the Tennessee and
North Carolina mountains; but she ignored the convocation. One drop of
bitterness, if tasted again--even reminiscently--would have turned
everything to gall. Instead, she found a measure of sweetness in the
letters which followed on her return from that region. They were addressed
in a bold, dashing young hand, and bore the postmark "Nashville." Hortense
was inclined to let them lie conspicuously on the front-hall table, for
half an hour or so, before she took them up. Little might be absolutely
known about her passage with Cope; but there the letters lay, for her
aunt's eye and for Carolyn Thorpe's.
Carolyn prattled a little, not indiscreetly, about her meeting with the
Freeford family on the campus.
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