Hildegarde felt that she liked him very much. With all his sophistication, the things that he said seemed sincere, and she was perfectly at her ease with him. More at ease with him than with her father or Miss Anne, or Sally Hulburt—more at ease than with any one else in the whole wide world, except Crispin.
Yet he was not in the least like Crispin. Crispin was not a man of the world—he belonged to the sky and the woods and the sunsets. He was like nobody else in that. And he was so strong and young and beautiful.
Meriweather was not beautiful, nor was he young. He was thin, dark, tall, with a thin, dark face, small mustache, a sweep of dark brows. But it was his eyes which seemed to Hildegarde the most prepossessing thing about him. They were brown with gold flecks in them, and when Meriweather laughed they lighted his face, so that the thinness and darkness disappeared, and one seemed to see only a flashing merriment which matched his name. And even when he did not laugh, his eyes held you—deep pools of light, attentive, understanding.
He was saying now, with all the gold lighted up, "Do you know you are a life-line?"
Her eyes came up from her slipper toes. "A life-line?"
"Yes. If you hadn't come when you did, I am afraid I should have had to chuck it—Round Hill, I mean. The monotony was getting on my nerves."
Her eyelashes flickered. "You had Sally."
"But Sally isn't an angel in the house. She's great fun on the golf course, or with a horse under her. But
