"There'll be a great deal to talk over," Hildegarde stated, "but we'll have to wait until the others are gone. Perhaps you'd like to read her letter."
She handed it to her aunt, who stood looking down at it. "She wrote a prettier hand than Catherine or I. She learned it after she was married."
Hildegarde, with a heart-breaking vision of her mother as a young wife striving to fit herself into her environment, said, "Everything she did was lovely."
"Yes," Aunt Catherine agreed, "it was." Her voice was gentle.
They went down together.
There were several people in the room, and Crispin Harlowe was sitting on the edge of the high sofa. He rose, as Hildegarde entered, and went up to her.
"I came as soon as I heard."
It was as if he answered in her some accusation of procrastination.
"I did not hear," he continued, "until this morning."
She had given him her hand, and he still held it. The eyes of the other people in the room were on them.
"Shall we go for a walk?" he asked in a low tone. "We can't talk here."
"Presently," she said. "I want to speak to the Skinners."
The Skinners were distant cousins. They had been late for the funeral, and for the feast that followed. Hildegarde had not seen them, so now she sat and talked to them. Crispin, from across the room, watched her, and thought he had never seen her lovelier
