[Pg 17] Once more Hilda dropped obediently back. But as she lay there, very wide awake indeed, she couldn't help sighing: "Oh, how I should love to go to Beulah!" And there was another sigh to set it off. Now, it might be supposed, from the fervour of the young girl's tone, that this Beulah, of which both had repeatedly spoken, must be a wonderfully and peculiarly charming place. Yes, it must indeed possess rare attributes to make a girl beg to be allowed to abandon her nice snug nest at dawn for a mere sight of it. And yet, curiously enough, Beulah was hardly charming in any actual sense: just a tiny, poky, dull little hole of a town, a poor speck on a minor railroad. All things considered, Louise's advice sounded very sensible: "You know you're better off here on the Point." However, Hilda by no means thought so, and she shook her head with stolid vehemence. "And I thought," her sister continued, paying very little attention to her own words, "I thought there was to be a tennis match this morning." "Yes, there is," admitted Hilda. "Well, you know they couldn't possibly play without you." She forgot her phrases as fast as she uttered them. She was ploughing through her jewellery case for a certain brooch. It was one which Richard had given[Pg 18] her, and which had somehow been overlooked when the other gifts had been sent back to him at the Rev. Needham's firm request. She meant, if she could find it, to wear the brooch this morning. It might be Lynndal would show himself too sure of her. She might want to impress upon him the fact that her life had not been loveless. At length she found the ornament and put it on, with a little toss of coquetry. Of course Louise didn't mean really to hold off any regarding their engagement. Ah, no. That was a settled thing, as a glance at the correspondence must amply prove. Nevertheless, she decided on the brooch. Richard, with his faithlessness, had hacked two years right out of her life. But Louise had a new lover! The earlier affair was remote enough to stand a little harmless commercializing now. [Pg 18] Hilda modestly deprecated the enviable light in which her tennis playing had been put by her sister. "You know that's not true!" she said. "What isn't true?"
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