vice about the bridesmaids' costumes, and that it was time things were getting under way.
On her last night at the farm, Hildegarde said farewell to that upper room in which she had spent so many hours with her mother. Everything spoke of the past—the little beds so close together, the books on the shelves, the portraits on the wall. Here, after all the tumult of her unhappy romance, Elizabeth Musgrove had found peace. Here alone she had fought her battles; here the baby Hildegarde had lain on her arm, and here, in later years, the two had talked together. Hildegarde remembered that lovely face lighted by the candle, and lighted, too, by the spirit which burned within.
She knelt for a moment by her mother's bed. "Darling, darling," she said, "if you could only come back to me!"
When she told her aunts "good-by," she cried a little. She couldn't understand her emotion. She wasn't really sorry to go. Her blood quickened, indeed, at the thought of the good times that lay ahead of her. But there was a touch of sadness in this second separation from the place which had so long sheltered her.
She met Sally in Baltimore. They were to stay at Miss Anne's for a few days. Mrs. Hulburt was in New York having some old jewels reset for her daughter's wedding-present.
"Thank heaven, they're pearls," Sally said, as she and Hildegarde sat in Miss Anne's sun-room an hour after Hildegarde's arrival. "I hate anything else. Those white jade ornaments of Neale's give me the creeps."
