cceptance--Miss Grierson attended to the
phrasing of her note--but expressed her regret that she would be able to
come only for the tea-hour. Drinking tea must be much the same, reasoned
Maggie, whether it be drunk in a smart hotel or in a smart country home.

Maggie's native shrewdness suggested her simplest summer gown as likely
to have committed the fewest errors, and the invaluable stupidity of
Miss Grierson aided her toward correctness if not originality. When
Dick came he was delighted with her appearance. On the way out he
was ebulliently excited in his talk. Maggie averaged a fair degree of
sensibility in her responses, though only her ears heard him. She was
far more excited than he, and every moment her excitement mounted, for
every moment she was speeding nearer the greatest ordeal of her life.

When at length they curved through the lawns of satin smoothness and
Dick slowed down the car before the long white house, splendid in its
simplicity, Maggie's excitement had added unto it a palpitant, chilling
awe. And unto this was added consternation when, as they mounted the
steps, Miss Sherwood smilingly crossed the piazza and welcomed her
without waiting for an introduction. Maggie mumbled some reply; she
later could not remember what it was. Indeed she never had met such a
woman: so finished, so gracious, so unaffected, with a sparkle of humor
in her brown eyes; and the rich plainness of her white linen frock
made Maggie conscious that her own supposed simplicity was cheap and
ostentatious. If Miss Sherwood had received her with hostility, doubt,
or even chilled civility, the situation would have been easier; the
aroused Maggie would then have made use of her own great endowment of
hauteur and self-esteem. But to be received with this frank cordiality,
on a basis of a equality with this finished woman--that left Maggie for
the moment without arms. She had, in her high moments, believed herself
an adventuress whose poise and plans nothing could unbalance. Now she
found herself suddenly just a young girl of eighteen who didn't know
what to do.

Had Maggie but known it that sudden unconscious confusion, which seemed
to betray her, was really more effective for her purpose than would
have been the best of conscious acting. It established her at once as an
unstagey ingenue--simple, unspoiled, unacquainted with the formulas and
formalities of the world.

Miss Sherwood, in her easy possession of the situation, bani