“That is Eleanor,” said Sylvia, with a keen, painful recollection of the scene a year ago.  She added doubtfully, “Didn’t you think their dresses pretty, Aunt Victoria?”

“I thought they looked like pin-cushions on a kitchen-maid’s dressing-table,” returned Aunt Victoria more forcibly than she usually expressed herself.  “You look vastly better with the straight lines of your plain white dresses.  You have a great deal of style, Sylvia.  Judith is handsomer than you, but she will never have any style.”  This verdict, upon both the Huberts and herself, delivered with a serious accent of mature deliberation, impressed Sylvia.  It was one of the speeches she was to ponder.

Although Professor Marshall showed himself noticeably negligent in the matter of introducing his colleagues to his sister, it was only two or three days before Aunt Victoria’s half-hours of waiting before the Main Building had other companionship than Sylvia’s.  This was due to the decisive action of young Professor Saunders, just back from the British Museum, where, at Professor Marshall’s suggestion, he had been digging up facts about the economic history of the twelfth century in England.  Without waiting for an invitation he walked straight up to the carriage with the ostensible purpose of greeting Sylvia, who was a great favorite of his, and who in her turn had a romantic admiration for the tall young assistant.  Of all the faculty people who frequented the Marshall house, he and old Professor Kennedy were the only people whom Sylvia considered “stylish,” and Professor Kennedy, in spite of his very high connection with the aristocracy of La Chance, was so cross and depressed that really his “style” did not count.  She was now greatly pleased by the younger professor’s public and cordial recognition of her, and, with her precocious instinct for social ease, managed to introduce him to her aunt, even adding quaintly a phrase which she had heard her mother use in speaking of him, “My father thinks Professor Saunders has a brilliant future before him.”

This very complimentary reference had not the effect she hoped for, since both the young man and Aunt Victoria laughed, exchanging glances of understanding, and said to each other, “Isn’t she delicious?” But at least it effectually broke any ice of constraint, so that the new-comer felt at once upon the most familiarly friendly terms with the sister of his chief.  Thereafter he came frequently to lean an arm on the side of the carriage and talk with the “ladies-in-waiting,” as he called the pretty woman and child.  Once or twice Sylvia was transferred to the front seat beside Peter, the negro driver, on the ground that she could watch the horses better, and they took Professor Saunders for a drive through the flat, fertile country, now beginning to gleam ruddy with autumnal tints of bronze and scarlet and gold.  Although she greatly enjoyed the social brilliance of these occasions, on which Aunt Victoria showed herself unexpectedly sprightly and altogether enchanting, Sylvia felt a little guilty that they did not return to pick up Professor Marshall, and she was relieved, when they met at supper, that he made no reference to their defection.