When at length they curved through the lawns of satin smoothness and Dick slowed down the car before the long white house, splendid in its simplicity, Maggie’s excitement had added unto it a palpitant, chilling awe.  And unto this was added consternation when, as they mounted the steps, Miss Sherwood smilingly crossed the piazza and welcomed her without waiting for an introduction.  Maggie mumbled some reply; she later could not remember what it was.  Indeed she never had met such a woman:  so finished, so gracious, so unaffected, with a sparkle of humor in her brown eyes; and the rich plainness of her white linen frock made Maggie conscious that her own supposed simplicity was cheap and ostentatious.  If Miss Sherwood had received her with hostility, doubt, or even chilled civility, the situation would have been easier; the aroused Maggie would then have made use of her own great endowment of hauteur and self-esteem.  But to be received with this frank cordiality, on a basis of a equality with this finished woman—­that left Maggie for the moment without arms.  She had, in her high moments, believed herself an adventuress whose poise and plans nothing could unbalance.  Now she found herself suddenly just a young girl of eighteen who didn’t know what to do.

Had Maggie but known it that sudden unconscious confusion, which seemed to betray her, was really more effective for her purpose than would have been the best of conscious acting.  It established her at once as an unstagey ingenue—­simple, unspoiled, unacquainted with the formulas and formalities of the world.

Miss Sherwood, in her easy possession of the situation, banished Dick with “Run away for a while, Dick, and give us two women a chance to get acquainted.”  She had caught Maggie’s embarrassment, and led her to a corner of the veranda which looked down upon the gardens and the glistering Sound.  She spoke of the impersonal beauties spread before their vision, until she judged that Maggie’s first flutter had abated; then she led the way to wicker chairs beside a table where obviously tea was to be spread.

Miss Sherwood accepted Maggie for exactly what she seemed to be; and presently she was saying in a low voice, with her smiling, unoffending directness: 

“Excuse the liberty of an older woman, Miss Cameron—­but I don’t wonder that Dick likes you.  You see, he’s told me.”

If Maggie had been at loss for her cue before, she had it now.  It was unpretentiousness.

“But, Miss Sherwood—­I’m so crude,” she faltered, acting her best.  “Out West I never had any chances to learn.  Not any chances like your Eastern girls.”

“That’s no difference, my dear.  You are a nice, simple girl—­that’s what counts!”

“Thank you,” said Maggie.

“So few of our rich girls of the East know what it is to be simple,” continued Miss Sherwood.  “Too many are all affectation, and pose, and forwardness.  At twenty they know all there is to be known, they are blasees—­cynical—­ready for divorce before they are ready for marriage.  By contrast you are so wholesome, so refreshing.”