Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/80

 me to inform them whether Cornelia was "real." I was also wondering how much of these letters I could discreetly disclose to her.

She met me on the threshold of the wide verandah, standing for an instant tiptoe in a practicable yet perfect sylvan costume, and framed between two tall Chinese vases of wild tiger-lilies, which made a little pattern with the glints in her hair and the knot of soft flame at her breast.

"Let's walk!" she said.

"Let's," I replied; and we struck briskly into the abandoned road which runs, carpeted with bindweed and bittersweet, for miles and miles skirting the forest, with only a thin curtain of young silver poplars and birches between it and the lake. Cornelia is a light, crisp-footed walker,—at her gayest walking, and good for long distances,—my only complaint being that she has forgotten how to loiter. She seems rather bent upon reaching the terminus ad quem than careful to let me fall a step to the rear, where I may consider with more detachment how, like a dryad, she expresses and completes the woodland vista.

"I had a letter this morning," I began, "from an unknown lady. It would amuse you."

"Would it indeed?" said Cornelia, moving