Crucial Instances by Edith Wharton

_Mrs. Ambrose Dale -- forty, slender, still young -- sits in her drawing-room at the tea-table. The winter twilight is falling, a lamp has been lit, there is a fire on the hearth, and the room is pleasantly dim and flower-scented. Books are scattered everywhere -- mostly with autograph inscriptions "From the Author" -- and a large portrait of_ Mrs. Dale, _at her desk, with papers strewn about her, takes up one of the wall-panels. Before_ Mrs. Dale _stands_ Hilda, _fair and twenty, her hands full of letters_.

_Mrs. Dale_. Ten more applications for autographs? Isn't it strange that people who'd blush to borrow twenty dollars don't scruple to beg for an autograph?