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Chapter XXII
A Triumphal Entry

HILDEGARDE'S home-coming in September was in the nature of a triumphal entry. The papers made much of it. Her name was linked constantly with Sally's. A gossipy little society weekly linked her name also with Bobby Gresham's.

Crispin, seeing her for the first time at Anne Carew's house in Baltimore, found in her the changes her letters had foreshadowed. She had cut her hair, and had lopped off with it, apparently, a certain quality of ingenuousness which had always charmed him. She seemed restless, excited, eager, flinging the challenge of her gay loveliness to all who cared to look.

Yet it was the old Hildegarde who flashed out a greeting, "Crispin, how glad I am!" And when he had to give way to other arrivals: "Wait till the crowd thins out. I want to talk to you."

He was content after that to stand by Dickory, the parrot, and watch Hildegarde in her new rôle. He wondered how she did it—with that air of ease. Yet blood told in such matters, and she was, after all, a Carew, with a background of generations of graciously-bred women. And there was that native ease which had belonged to Elizabeth Musgrove.