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It was on the afternoon of New Year's Day, and Mr Brandon was sitting in his library with Colonel Pinckney Macon, an elderly gentleman of social habits and genial temper, whom Mr Brandon had invited to Midbranch to spend the holidays, and who was afterwards to be his travelling companion as far as Richmond.
Mrs Keswick saw that it would be to her interest, for a time at least, to make friends with him; and this was the way she took to do it. She would not come to Midbranch herself, and bring the niece, but she would have Roberta come to her. In the pathos and cordiality Mr Brandon believed not at all.
His trunk had been sent over from the Green Sulphur Springs, and he was much better satisfied to wait here than at that deserted watering-place. It was, indeed, a very agreeable spot in which to wait, and quite near enough to Midbranch for him to carry on his desired operations, when the time should arrive.
She was not going on a mere visit of state or ceremony; her visit at Midbranch would require her whole attention, and she did not wish to distract her mind by wondering whether her bonnet was straight on her head or not, and she was so unaccustomed to the feel of it that she would never know if it got turned hind part foremost.
He was very willing, therefore, to agree to the plan which, for years, had been Mr Brandon's most cherished scheme; that he and Roberta should make their home at Midbranch, and that he should take charge of the estate, which would be his wife's property after the old gentleman's decease.
The marriage of Junius Keswick and Roberta March was appointed for the fifteenth of January, and Mr Brandon had arranged to be in New York a few days before the event. He intended, however, to leave Midbranch soon after the first of the year, and to spend a week with some of his friends in Richmond.
I beg you, from the bottom of my heart, to decide it." "Mr Croft," said she, "when you used to come, nearly every day, to see me at Midbranch, and we took those long walks in the woods, you never talked in this way. I considered you as a gentleman whose prudence and good sense would not allow him to step outside of the path of perfectly conventional social intercourse.
Having now given up his North Carolina trip one object of which had been still another visit to Midbranch on his return he was obliged to wait until the next day for a train to the North; and, consequently, he had another evening to devote to reflections. These, after a time, became unsatisfactory.
You were talking about it last night. It couldn't have been my letter from Howlett's that brought you down here?" "No," said Lawrence, "my meeting with Mr Keswick at Midbranch was entirely accidental. When I arrived there, a few days ago, I had no reason to suppose that I should meet him.
This was the first time in his life that he had ever forbidden any one to visit Midbranch, and yet he did not feel that he had been either discourteous or inhospitable. "There are times," he said to himself, "when a man must stand up for his own interest; and this is one of the times."
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