rson at the long dinner table, at which eighteen
guests sat in such stately and such separated great carved chairs as
almost to dine alone. Everyone was charmingly kind to the little Melrose
protegee, who was to be introduced at a formal tea next week. The men
were all older than Leslie's group and were neither afraid nor too
selfishly wrapped up in their own narrow little circle to be polite.
Norma had known grown young men, college graduates, and the sons of
prominent families, who were too entirely conventional to be addressed
without an introduction, or to turn to a strange girl's rescue if she
spilled a cup of tea. But there was none of that sort of thing here.

To be sure, Annie's men were either married, divorced, or too old to be
strictly eligible in the eyes of unsophisticated nineteen, but that did
not keep them from serving delightfully as dinner partners. Then Aunt
Annie herself was delightful to-night, and joined in the general, if
unexpressed, flattery that Norma felt in the actual atmosphere.

"Heavens--do you hear that, Ella?" said Annie, to an intimate and
contemporary, when Norma shyly asked if the dress was all as it should
be--if the--well, the neck, wasn't just a little----? "Heavens!" said
Mrs. von Behrens, roundly, "if I had your shoulders--if I were nineteen
again!--you'd see something a good deal more sensational than that!"

This was not the sort of thing one repeated to Aunt Kate. It was, like
much of Annie's conversation, so daring as to be a little shocking. But
Annie had so much manner, such a pleasant, assured voice, that somehow
Norma never found it censurable in her.

To-night, for the first time, Hendrick von Behrens paid her a little
personal attention. Norma had always liked the big, blond, silent man,
with his thinning fair hair, and his affection for his sons. It was of
his sons that he spoke to her, as he came up to her to-night.

"There are two little boys up in the nursery that don't want to go to
sleep until Cousin Norma comes up to say good-night," said Hendrick,
smiling indulgently. Norma turned willingly from Chris and two or three
other men and women; it was a privilege to be sufficiently at home in
this magnificent place to follow her host up to the nursery upstairs,
and be gingerly hugged by the little silk-pajamed boys.

Chris watched her go, the big fan and the blue eye and the delightful
low voice all busy as she and Hendrick went away, and an odd thought
came to h