The glow of anticipated victory did not leave Dolores’ face at first sight of Mrs. Morrison’s mansion, although it was something of a shock. Nothing should frighten her now. She had made one friend--a woman friend. She might--she _must_ make another. Briskly as though prepared for the block-front display of lawn, unusual even on this avenue of extravagance, she turned in through the center gateway. Under the bare trees which she knew to be so costly a luxury, she hurried, as if fearful that some late-clinging leaf might mistake her importance and honor her head. Past clumps of drying hydrangeas, past a fountain which still defied the freeze of winter with rainbow spray, past a marble dryad of a cynical smirk afterwards acutely remembered, she found herself confronted by a well-balanced marble pile. Without a pause, lest trepidation weaken her, she descended the steps to the ground-floor entrance and pressed the bell. An elderly gentleman, of such distinguished appearance that she felt he must be the master of the house himself, opened the door. After inspection of Madame Sheehan’s card, he escorted her across a galleried entrance hall of a luxury and loftiness well-nigh incredible. At the rear, he threw open the door of a small parlor, cheerful from its window-boxed blooming geraniums. Mrs. Morrison would be down, he told her. Dolores’ wait was not long. The tap-tap of high heels upon the marble foyer outside brought her to her feet. She “spoke up” according to instructions and tried to recall the assurance which had carried her past the rules--_and_ the French--of née Shinn. She stressed her education and the “way” she was said to have with children, especially with little girls. The more she talked, however, the more serious looked the woman whom she hoped to make her friend. “I am afraid,” said Mrs. Morrison, “that the case has been misrepresented. Strange, when I explained to Madame Sheehan myself, on my trip among the agencies this morning! The child for whom I need a governess is not a girl and has anything but the amiable disposition accredited to him.” “Madame’s French must have misled me.” Dolores chose to ignore the particulars of “those curls of gold, those turquoise eyes,” evidently mere chimera of a Hibernian imagination. At the suggestion of failure she all the more craved success. “It does not especially matter that he is not a girl. He is a child, isn’t he?” Mrs. Morrison glanced rather suspiciously at her. “I don’t know. The last governess called him a fiend. You are different from the sort we have had and expected again. I scarcely know what to say. You look a sweet-dispositioned girl, but are very young. Perhaps I’d better leave the decision to----” Laughter and spirited repartee in the voices of a man and a woman sounded pleasantly from the hall. They seemed to decide her. She arose; crossed to the door; paused briefly to say: “His mother has just come in from her ride. Perhaps she will speak with you.”