From the window Hildegarde saw young Meriweather ride away, a half-dozen dogs streaming ahead of him. She liked the picture it made—the erect figure on the brown horse sweeping down the white oyster-shell road that led to the Bay.
Delia came up with a message from Carew. Miss Hildegarde would dine with her father at the Hulburts'. She must not worry about what she would wear. The Hulburts were most informal. Delia, enlarging the theme, revealed that the Hulburts had been neighbors for more than one generation. There was now only Mrs. Hulburt, a widow, and her daughter, Sally. They were not rich, but their social position was unassailable. Delia's vocabulary was somewhat limited, but she made this clear.
Hildegarde, curled up luxuriously in the puffy bed, listened. It sounded, she thought, rather like a storybook. Life, as she had known it, wasn't made up of balls and parties and hunt breakfasts.
Delia left her at last, and Hildegarde lay, very tired and very comfortable, looking out at the Bay. She had never before been near the sea. Her imagination carried her beyond the limits of the Chesapeake to the ocean that stretched to Spain. Perhaps some day she would sail it. She drifted off into sleep, waking at last to find that it was nearly five o'clock and was time to dress for dinner.
When at last she went down, she found her father by the library fire.
"I did the best I could with myself," she told him, as he rose to meet her. "I'm afraid I'm not very fashionable."
