Externally Herndon Hall was all that was charming and gracious--a much more beautiful and refined home than Adelle had ever seen. It occupied one of those spacious old manorial houses above the Hudson, where the river swept in a gracious curve at the foot of the long lawn. An avenue of old trees led up to the large stone house from the high road half a mile away. There were all sorts of dependencies,--stables, greenhouses, and ornamental gardens of the old-fashioned kind,--which were carefully kept up so that the Hall resembled a large private estate, such as it was meant to be, rather than a school. It was popularly supposed that Herndon Hall had once been the country-place of Miss Thompson's people, which was not true; but that shrewd woman of the world, recognizing all the advantages of an aristocratic background, kept up the place on a generous footing, with gardeners, stablemen, and many inside servants, for which, of course, the pupils paid liberally. The Hall was run less as a school than as a private estate. Many of the girls had their own horses in the stable, and rode every pleasant afternoon under the care of an old English riding-master, who was supposed to have been "Somebody in England" once. (Later on, when the motor became popular the girls had their own machines, but that was after Adelle's time.) There was lawn tennis on the ample lawns, and this with the horseback riding and occasional strolls was the only concession to the athletic spirit of the day. The schoolrooms were not the feature of the Hall that one might expect. They were confined to a small wing in the rear, or the basement, and there were no laboratories or other paraphernalia of modern education. The long drawing-room, with its recessed windows facing the river, was hung with "old masters"--a few faded American protraits and some recent copies of the Italian school. It was also furnished luxuriously and had books in handsome bindings. But educationally, in any accepted sense of the word, Herndon Hall was quite negligible, as all such institutions for the care of the daughters of the rich must be, as long as the chief concern of its patrons is to see their daughters properly married and "taking a good position in society." Adelle quickly perceived that, though she had been reckoned a dull pupil in the Alton Girls' High School, she had much more than enough book knowledge to hold her own in the classes of her new school. If it is difficult to say what is a good education for a boy whose parents can afford to give him "the best," it is almost impossible to solve the educational riddle for his sister. She must have good manners, an attractive person, and, less clearly, some acquaintance with literature, music, and art, and one modern language to enable her to hold her own in the social circles that it is presumed she will adorn. At least that was the way Miss Thompson looked at the profound problem of girls' education. She herself was accounted