"I haven't dared—yet."
"You'd dare anything except—to marry me—" Sally poked an accusing finger at him. "Hildegarde, you look good enough to eat. Miss Anne has a way with her when it comes to clothes. She hasn't spoiled your individuality."
Until Hildegarde came to Round Hill, she had never known she had individuality. Yet to be told it was rather stimulating, as if she had had an unaccustomed glass of wine.
Dinner was a dream-like affair during which Hildegarde sat at the foot of the table, opposite her father, in what she felt should have been Miss Anne's place.
But Miss Anne would have none of it. "The place of honor belongs to Hildegarde," she told her guests with her hand on the shoulder of her niece. "May I present to you the new mistress of the house? And please don't turn her head with the nice things you are going to say to her."
They said the nice things, coining flattering phrases which seemed to flow over Hildegarde in soft waves of sound. There were twelve people at the table, some of them from Baltimore, some of them from the country, two men from Washington.
One of the men from Washington sat at Hildegarde's right. He had a great mane of white hair which, in spite of his short stature, gave him an air of distinction. He had charming manners, but Hildegarde was not quite sure that she liked him. She wondered how he would look if he cut his hair in the prevailing fashion. She imagined he would at once lose his air of splendor, like a shorn sheep, or a plucked goose. He had light-
