but I wouldn't let her. I'll run down to Baltimore with you and leave you with her for a few days."
It was in their first moment alone that Miss Anne told Hildegarde:
"You are like your mother. I was very fond of her, and Louis made a great mistake. But that is all in the past, isn't it? And you and I must begin right here without any post-mortems."
Miss Anne seemed to Hildegarde very young for her years. She was slender and dark and wore charming clothes. She had a modern mind, was ardent at sports, took a keen interest in politics, and was equally at home in the latest dances or in making speeches on World Peace. She had shaken off the shackles of conservatism which had bound the women of her family, and had emerged free in all things except in her relation to her brother. Louis was, she asserted, a Turk and a tyrant, but she loved him. And loving him, she let him bully her.
"It is the reason we live apart," she told Hildegarde. "When I am with him, I want to do the things he demands, and when I am away from him, I rage at my weakness."
There was laughter in her eyes. "Louis insists that I shall spend the winter at Round Hill with you," she told Hildegarde, "if I do, you'll have to act as a buffer. I usually stand him for a month or two, and then I pack my trunk and come back to Baltimore. He always calls me up and tells me what he thinks of me for deserting him. And I tell him it is the only way I can own my soul. I can defy him at long distance, and he knows it."
