She turned herself about, artlessly surprised to see that her neck and shoulders looked quite like those of the women in the fashion-plates and the magazine illustrations.  She looked at the clock.  It was early yet.  She reflected that she never could take the time other girls did in dressing.  She wondered what they did.  What could one do, after one’s bath was taken, one’s hair done, and one’s gown donned—­oh, of course, powder!  She applied it liberally, and then wiped away every grain, that being what she had seen older girls do in the Gymnasium dressing-room.  Then with a last survey of her face, unaltered by the ceremonial with the powder-puff, she stepped to the door.

But there, with her hand on the knob, she was halted by an inexplicable hesitation about opening the door and showing herself.  She looked down at her bare shoulders and bosom, and faintly blushed.  It was really very, very low, far lower than any dress she had ever worn!  And the fact that Eleanor Hubert, that all the “swell” girls wore theirs low, did not for the moment suffice her—­it was somehow different—­their showing their shoulders and her showing her own.  She could not turn the knob and stood, irresolute, frowning vaguely, though not very deeply disquieted.  Finally she compromised by taking up a pretty spangled scarf Aunt Victoria had sent her, wrapping it about her like a shawl, in which quaint garb she went out in more confidence, and walked down the hall to the stairway.  Half-way down she met Colonel Fiske just coming up to dress.  Seeing one of his young guests arrayed for the evening he made her his compliments, the first words rather absent and perfunctory.  But when he was aware which guest she was, he warmed into a pressing and personal note, as his practised eyes took in the beauty, tonight startlingly enhanced by excitement, of the girl’s dark, shining eyes, flushed cheeks, and white neck and arms.  He ended by lifting her hand, in his florid way, and pressing it to his white mustache for a very fervent kiss.  Sylvia blushed prettily, meeting his hot old eyes with a dewy unconsciousness, and smiling frankly up into the deeply lined carnal face with the simple-hearted pleasure she would have felt at the kind word of any elderly man.  The Colonel seemed quite old to her—­much older than her father—­like Professor Kennedy.

“Jerry’s in the library, waiting,” his father announced with a sly laugh.  “I wondered at the young rascal’s being dressed so far ahead of time.”  He turned reluctantly and went on up the stairs, leaving Sylvia to go forward to her first meeting alone with the man she had promised to marry.  As she descended the long flight of stairs, her scarf, loosened by her movement, slipped unobserved in her excitement and hung lightly about her shoulders.

The door to the library was shut.  She opened it with a rapidly beating heart and stood on the threshold, shyly hesitating to advance further, looking with agitation at the stalwart, handsome, well-groomed figure which stood in an attitude of impatient expectation by the window.  Except for the light which came in from the electric bulb on the porch outside, the big room was in twilight.  In the brilliantly lighted door-opening, she stood revealed as by a searchlight.