secret they brought from fair France—the magic that purchases the gift of perennial youth."
"Fie! fie! how you digress. I am dying for information of my beloved young cousin, and you launch into irrelevant gallantries," frowned Mrs. Baxter with her forehead, her lips refractory, and eyes dancing with delight. "Do sit down and tell me more!"
"I cannot, thank you! I have bored you already with a visit three times as long as I meant it should be. Your cousin does the family credit. I can award her no higher praise. Au revoir!"
"One second," she entreated, detaining him. "I shall write to the precious lamb to-morrow. Please give me her address."
Orrin dictated, and she wrote it upon her ivory tablets.
"Perhaps it would be as well not to mention me in connection with this renewal of your intercourse," he said, carelessly. "Your friendship will be the more welcome if it is supposed that it has its root in your fond recollection of her mother. There is a ring! I have loitered here shamefully. Do you know that your beautiful drawing-room is likened about town to Circe's cave?"
CHAPTER V.
Mr. Wyllys was careful not to repeat his visit within a week. He could trust to the natural growth of the seed he had sown, and he was too politic to appear solicitous, on his own account, for the resumption of cousinly intercourse between the houses of Baxter and Kirke. He did not overrate his influence with the would-be leader of Hamilton society. Four days after the party-call he had a note from Jessie.
"Dear Cousin Orrin: I enclose a letter I received last night from Mrs. Baxter, wife of the President of Marion College. She is, I have learned from this, my nearest living relative outside my immediate family circle, being my mother's first-cousin. I never heard of her until the arrival of this communication. My father had not thought it best to speak to me of the relationship, unless she should see fit to seek me out She writes in an affectionate strain, and is urgent in her request that I should pass the winter with her. My father and sister agree with me that you are the proper person to consult with regard to my answer to the invitation. You are probably acquainted with Mrs. Baxter, and are certainly more au fait to the usages of polite society than any of us. Tell me freely what you think I ought to do—freely as if I were in blood, as I am in heart,
"Here is an example of hereditary transmission that would stagger Wendell Holmes himself!" thought Orrin, scanning the epistle, letter by letter. "The chirography of this girl, who could not write at the time of her mother's death, is precisely similar to hers. It is a nut for those to crack who carp at the idea that the handwriting is a criterion of character—attribute variety of penmanship to educational influences entirely. What has my fair kinswoman inherited from her maternal progenitor besides these sloping, slender Italian characters, I wonder? It is worth my while to investigate the question as a psychological phenomenon."
To secure the facilities for doing this, he resolved to run down to Beechdale the next day.
