Barbara's Vagaries

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II. Meanwhile Marcou bowed himself away and returned to the quiet corner he had left a few moments since. He hesitated, finding there, not only Miss MacFarland, but two favored gallants of the season; Mr. Bradley, a Philadelphian, rather heavy and dull, but well dressed and full of fashionable mannerisms;...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II. Meanwhile Marcou bowed himself away and returned to the quiet corner he had left a few moments since. He hesitated, finding there, not only Miss MacFarland, but two favored gallants of the season; Mr. Bradley, a Philadelphian, rather heavy and dull, but well dressed and full of fashionable mannerisms; also his friend Mr. Edgerton, a practised beau. Miss MacFarland had observed Marcou's approach, and he interpreted a welcome in the little change that passed over her singularly expressive face. It would be difficult to define Katharine MacFarland's charm. Her father, Perry MacFarland, scholar, student, writer, had been sent to Nassau by his physician, buten route, their baggage being detained, they had lingered here waiting for it. Finding himself in a good company, among them several kindred spirits; pleased with entourage of watering-place pleasures and the old fort; also meeting good weather, he had lingered with his wife and daughter, still unwilling to go farther south. Mrs. MacFarland, like other Bostonians, thought well of Boston. She also thought amiably of many another elsewhere, for the MacFarlands loved an occasional trip abroad, and were well travelled in their own country. Mrs. MacFarland's home, besides being the most exclusive, was known to be the most delightful in Boston, frequented by its youth, its fashion, and its men of letters. The daughter, Katharine, was somewhat a puzzle to this mother, who suspected her of an unworldliness she herself entirely disapproved; she yet acknowledged that thegirl's daintiness well became her. Katharine, to her father, was like a poem whose pages he still turned, and whose mystery he might to-morrow, but not yet to-day, unravel. This slender maid restored to MacFar- land some of the illusion, the poetr...