But this they soon found was impossible even could they have banished
Leland; for Herbert Carrington, Philip Ross, Dick Percival and his
friends, and several others soon appeared upon the scene.
Elsie was now an acknowledged young lady; Violet in her own estimation and
that of her parents', still a mere child; but her height, her graceful
carriage and unaffected ease of manner--which last was the combined result
of native refinement and constant association with the highly polished and
educated, united to childlike simplicity of character and utter absence of
self-consciousness--often led strangers into the mistake of supposing her
several years older than she really was.
Her beauty, too, and her genius for music and painting added to her
attractiveness, so that altogether, the gentlemen were quite as ready to
pay court to her as to her sister, and had she been disposed to receive
their attentions, or to push herself forward in the least, her parents
would have found it difficult to prevent her entering society earlier than
was for her good.
But like her mother before her, Vi was in no haste to assume the duties
and responsibilities of womanhood.
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