But Enid was shaking her head again, her eyes infinitely fond and pitying. “I’m going abroad, dear. I haven’t been very well this winter—just tired from too much gayety, I think. The doctors advise a rest cure in southern France. I want you to go to a girls’ camp in New Hampshire. It’s really a part of your education, social and physical. I want you to ride and swim and hike all summer, with the sort of girls whom you’ll be meeting when you do join us in New York. “You’re to learn to play golf, perfect your game of tennis. By the way, I want you to go to as many house parties on your holidays as you can. Learn to flirt with the college youngsters you’ll meet; be gay, don’t be—” “Institutional,” Sally interrupted in a low voice as she turned sharply away from her mother. It was almost a relief to the girl when Enid was gone. Her mother’s exquisite, fragile beauty, her unconscious arrogance, her sophistication, her sometimes caustic wit, formed a barrier between them, in spite of the almost worshipful love that Sally felt for her. Enid, when she was with her, somehow made the 17-year-old-girl feel gawky, underdone, awkward, shy. Those cornflower blue eyes, when they were not misted with tears of affection for this daughter whom she had so recently discovered, seemed to Sally to be a powerful microscope trained upon all her deficiencies, enlarging them to frightening proportions. She knew that in these moments of critical survey her mother was looking upon her, not as a beloved daughter miraculously restored to her, but as a future debutante, bearer of the proud name of Barr, and as a pawn in the marriage game as it is played in the most exclusive circles in New York Society. And Sally squirmed miserably, pitifully afraid that she would never measure up to the standard which her mother and Courtney Barr had set for her, knowing, too, deep in her heart, that she did not want to. For her heart had been given to a golden young god of a man, whose kingdom was the soil, and whose wife needed none of the qualities which Enid Barr was bent upon cultivating in her daughter. But twelve years of implicit obedience to the authorities at the orphanage had left their indelible mark upon Sally Ford, who was now Sally Barr. She would do her best to become the radiant, cultured, charming, beautiful young creature whom Enid Barr wanted as a daughter. And since she had Enid’s letters to help her, the task was not so impossible as it had seemed to her. For in the letters Enid was more real as a mother than she could yet be in actual contact. The fat weekly envelopes were crammed with love, maternal advice, encouragement, tenderness.