Hilda had been pouring tea and passing little honey cakes made of corn and barley flour, and had not been noticing a newcomer who fluttered among them at a late hour and had not as yet been introduced to her. She was a girl about Hilda’s own age, with exquisite features highly enhanced by the perfection of tinting and powdering, put on so imperceptibly that only the initiated were sure it was not real. There was something almost startling in the prettiness of her face, the delicate, high-arched eyebrows, the long dark eyelashes, the faint shadows under the beautiful wide eyes, the rosebud mouth that could dimple or droop pathetically. Her dress was in the extreme of style, her frock cut a little lower at the neck, a little higher at the hem, a little scanter in the skirt than other girls w
