Publisher's Synopsis
Harriet Blair was seventeen when she went with her father and mother and her brother Austen to New Orleans, to the marriage of an older brother, Alexander, the father's business representative at that place. It was characteristic of the Blairs that they declined the hospitality of the bride's family, and from the hotel attended, punctiliously and formally, the occasions for which they had come. It takes ease to accept hospitality. Alexander Blair, the father, banker and capitalist, of Vermont stock, now the richest man in Louisville, was of a stern ruggedness unsoftened by a long and successful career in the South, while his wife, the daughter of a Scotch schoolmaster settled in Pennsylvania, was the possessor of a thrifty closeness and strong, practical sense.
