"Yes."
A fleeting shadow across the shining eyes! Then the soup came, and Hildegarde went at it with an appetite. Miss Anne like Delia was obsessed by a phrase. Who was it, in the face of great emotion, "went on cutting bread and butter?" Werther's Charlotte, of course. Well, Hildegarde was like that—eating chops and salad and strawberry tart with an effect of insensibility which was astonishing. A month ago she would have blushed herself to death at the mention of Crispin's name. And now, did she ever think of him?
That she was thinking more of him than was apparent on the surface was evidenced when she finished her strawberry tart. "I'm going to run up to the house, Aunt Anne, while you and the others finish your shopping. I want to get Crispin's letter."
"Is it as important as that?"
"Crispin's letters are always important," Hildegarde said coolly, "and I am wondering why he sent this one special."
Miss Anne's house was not far away from the shops. It was on an old-fashioned street near the Cathedral, and had fan-lights over the door, and a fenced-in garden at the back. It was charming, quaint, and with the other houses around it formed a little island of seclusion against the encroaching wave of commercialism which had swept down upon the residential streets and turned them from their ancient purposes. Its drawing-room was on the second floor, and what had once been a bay window had been enlarged into a sun-room which overlooked the garden.
It was to this sun-room that Hildegarde took her
