She shook her head helplessly.  “No, and I told him Margaret was coming.  That is her ring now.”

Mr. Culpeper looked at Mary Byrd.  “I am sure that Margaret would clothe herself more discreetly,” he remarked in a voice which sounded husky because he tried to make it facetious.  “When I was a young man it was the fashion to compare women to flowers, and in these unromantic days I should call Margaret our last violet—­”

A peal of laughter fell from the bright red lips of Mary Byrd.  “It sounds as depressing as the last rose of summer,” she cried, “and it’s just as certain to be left on the stem—­” Then she broke off, still pulsing with merriment, for the door opened slowly, and the last violet entered the room.

CHAPTER V

MARGARET

As he inserted his latch-key in the old-fashioned lock, Stephen remembered that his mother had instructed him not to be late because Margaret Blair was coming to spend the evening.  “It takes you so long to change that I believe you begin to dream as soon as you go to your room,” she had added; and while he made his way hurriedly and softly up the stairs, he wondered how he could have so completely forgotten the girl whom he had always thought of vaguely as the one who would some day—­some remote day probably—­become his wife.  He was not in love with Margaret, and he believed, though one could never be sure, that she was not in love with him—­that her fancy, if a preference so modest could be called by so capricious a name, was for the handsome young clergyman who read Browning with her every Tuesday afternoon.  But he was aware also that she would marry him if he asked her; he knew that the hearts of four formidable parents were set on the match; and in his past experience his mother’s heart had invariably triumphed over his less intrepid resolves.  When Janet had said that the war had “spoiled” this carefully nurtured sentiment, she had described the failure with her usual accuracy.  If he had never gone to France, he would certainly have married Margaret in his twenty-fourth year, and by this time they would have begun to rear a promising family.  For he was the offspring of tradition; and the seeds of that strange flower, which some adventurous ancestor had strewn in his soul, could not have broken through the compact soil in which he had grown.  If he had never felt the charm of the unknown, he would have remained satisfied to accept convention for romance; if he had never caught a glimpse of wider horizons, he would have restricted his vision contentedly to the tranquil current of James River.  But the harm had been done, as Janet said, the exotic flower had sprung up, and he had learned that the family formula for happiness could not suffice for his needs.  He craved something larger, something wider, something deeper, than the world in which his fathers had lived.  In that first year after his return he had felt that