“I should have wired,” admitted Ruth. Her voice sounded flat and toneless after hearing her aunt speak. “It would have been awkward if I hadn’t happened to be in town, but I was, so it’s all right. You’re older than I thought, I was afraid that you’d turn out a little girl.” “And you’re ever so much younger than I thought, Aunt Gloria,” said Ruth, beginning to gain her composure. “Thirty-five last birthday,” said her aunt. Immediately Ruth realized that thirty-five was the only possible age for a woman. To be older or younger than thirty-five was infinitely dull. She herself at nineteen, which only a few moments ago she had considered a very interesting age indeed, was quite hopeless. “But come, we mustn’t stay in this awful room. I didn’t tell George just where to take you. Certainly not here. I’ll have a room fixed up for you. Did George send for your trunks? He said you’d had breakfast, but that can’t be true—coffee perhaps, but not breakfast—I only had coffee myself. So we can eat together while they’re getting a room ready for you.” She was sweeping Ruth along with her down the stairs as she talked, not waiting for answers to anything she said. At the foot she turned and opened a door at the left of the staircase and peered in. “Too gloomy in the dining-room in the morning. We’ll go in here,” and she turned to the other side, opening a door into a big room, all furnished in soft grey and dull gold. Ruth’s artist eye perceived how such a neutral-tinted background was just the thing to enhance the colourful appearance and personality of her aunt. The only touch of vivid colour in the room was in the hangings at the deep, high windows that looked out on the park. “Have Amy bring our breakfast in here,” said Gloria, and then Ruth saw that George was standing in the doorway of the room they had just entered, though she had not heard her aunt call him. Later she observed the same thing many times, that George always appeared as if by magic and seemingly without being called whenever her aunt wanted him. The room was full of comfortable, low, cushioned chairs, and seated on two of them with a table between, on which George had laid a white cloth, Ruth and her aunt Gloria gave each other that full scrutiny which surprise and embarrassment had previously denied them. Ruth could see now that her aunt was not really so young as she had at first appeared. There were fine lines around her large eyes and art, not nature had painted her lashes black. Her fine brows had been “formed” and there were little, pale freckles gleaming on her white nose and across her long, cleanly moulded hands. Ruth saw all these things and they only strengthened her belief that Aunt Gloria was the most beautiful and charming woman in the world. She hoped very much that her aunt would like her, but she was not sanguine about it. She tried to tell herself that this woman was only her father’s sister, but it was hard to believe.