n't feel in the least related to it,
especially as the "van" began with a little "v."

"Come and support me, Phil," I begged, glancing regretfully at a
seductive bit of Dutch cheese studded with caraway seeds, which it would
be rude to stop and eat.

It's rather an ordeal to meet a new relation, even if you tell yourself
that you don't care what he thinks of you. I slipped behind Phil, making
her enter the reading-room first, which gave me time to peep over her
shoulder and fancy we had been directed wrongly. There was a man in the
room, but he could not have been a man in the days when mother was
speaking of "father's cousin." His expression only was old: it might
have been a hundred. The rest of him could not be more than twenty-eight,
and it was all extremely good-looking. If he were to turn out a cousin
I should not have to be ashamed of him. He was like a big, handsome
cavalryman, with a drooping mustache that was hay-colored, in contrast
with a brown skin, and a pair of the solemnest gray eyes I've ever
seen--except in the face of a baby.

"Are you Miss Van Buren?" this giant asked Phil gravely, holding out a
large brown hand.

"No," said Phil, unwilling to take the hand under false pretenses.

It fell, and so did the handsome face, if anything so solemn could have
become a degree graver than before.

"I beg your pardon," said the owner of both, speaking English with a
Scotch accent. "I have made a deceit."

I laughed aloud. "I'm Helen Van Buren," I said. And I put out my hand.

His swallowed it up, and though I wear only one ring I could have
shrieked. Yet his expression was not flattering. There are persons who
prefer my style to Phil's, but I could see that he wasn't one of them. I
felt he thought me garish; which was unjust, as I can't help it if my
complexion is very white and very pink, my eyes and eyelashes rather
dark, and my hair decidedly chestnut. I haven't done any of it myself,
yet I believe the handsome giant suspected me, and was sorry that Phil
was not Miss Van Buren.

"Are you my cousin Robert Van Buren's son?" I asked.

"I am the only Robert van Buren now living," he answered.

I longed to be flippant, and say that there were probably several dotted
about the globe, if we only knew them; but I dared not, under those
eyes--absolutely dared not. Instead, I remarked inanely that I was sorry
to hear his father was not alive.

"He died many years ago. We have got over it," he replied. An