"From Mrs. Baxter?" asked Adelaide. This was almost war. Mrs. Baxter was
a regal and possessive widow from Baltimore whose long and regular visits
to Mr. Lanley had once occasioned his family some alarm, though time had
now given them a certain institutional safety.

Her father was not flurried by the reference.

"No," he said; "though she writes me, I'm glad to say, that she is
coming soon."

"You don't tell me!" said Adelaide. The cream of the winter season was
usually the time Mrs. Baxter selected for her visit.

Her father did not notice her.

"If Mrs. Baxter should ever propose to me," he went on thoughtfully, "I
shouldn't refuse. I don't think I should have the--"

"The chance?" said his daughter.

"I was going to say the fortitude. But this," he went on, "was an elderly
cousin, who expressed a wish to come and be my housekeeper. Perhaps
matrimony was not intended. Mathilde, my dear, how does one tell nowadays
whether one is being proposed to or not?"

In this poignant and unexpected crisis Mathilde turned slowly and
painfully crimson. How _did_ one tell? It was a question which at the
moment was anything but clear to her.