Mrs. Stanbury herself was a lady-like and pretty woman, fair and
graceful, and her daughter Laura closely resembled her; both sweet
specimens of unpretending womanhood; both devoted to the discharge of
their simple duties and to one another; both entirely estimable.
Norman Stanbury was of a different type. He had probably inherited from
his father his manly and robust person, his open, dauntless, dark, and
handsome face, in which there was so much character that you hardly
looked for intellect, or perhaps at a brief glance confounded one with
the other. He was the avowed and devoted swain of my sister Evelyn, from
the time when they first chased fireflies together, up to their
dancing-school adolescence, and for me maintained a disinterested,
brotherly regard that was never slow to manifest itself in any time of
need, or even in the furtherance of my childish whims. Our relations
with this family were most friendly and agreeable. There never was any
undue familiarity; my father's reserve, and their own dignity, would of
themselves have precluded that certain precursor to the decline of
superficial friendship; but a consistent and somewhat ceremonious
intercourse was preserved from first to last, that could scarcely be
called intimacy.
Between George Gaston and myself alone existed that perfect freedom of
speech and intuitive understanding that lie at the root of all true and
deep affection.
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