to look at her. And she had promised to eat supper with him, which was a pleasant thing to contemplate.
The ballroom floor was crowded, but he saw only one figure—the one that belonged to moonlit groves, to silver pools among white birches. Oh, who could have dreamed of this when he gazed from the window at Round Hill and saw her coming up the road on that warm October morning?
All at once he missed her from the floor. His eyes swept the room, but she was nowhere to be seen. He decided to search for her, and took his leisurely way down the balcony stairs.
There was another stairway, the grand one which led up from an entrance court to the galleries which surrounded it. This was remote from the ballroom and was at the moment empty, except for a figure in floating green which fled lightly up until it reached the third landing.
Hildegarde could not have told why she had left the others. She knew that at this very moment a partner was hunting for her—one of the brilliant youths who had been making much of her since her spectacular introduction to them all.
She had simply felt that she must get away, still the beating of her heart, take stock of herself, find the Hildegarde she had always known. She was half-frightened by this new Hildegarde—this wild, gay creature! Her real self was quiet, a little sad, looking back somewhat wistfully, wanting her mother, longing for Crispin, hating Winslow and all his ways. Surely that Hildegarde must be waiting somewhere on the
