adn't
consciously copied her; she had simply "taken after" her, had been a
projection of her own long-past rebellion.

Mrs. Lidcote had deplored, when she started, that the _Utopia_ was a
slow steamer, and would take eight full days to bring her to her unhappy
daughter; but now, as the moment of reunion approached, she would
willingly have turned the boat about and fled back to the high seas. It
was not only because she felt still so unprepared to face what New York
had in store for her, but because she needed more time to dispose of
what the _Utopia_ had already given her. The past was bad enough,
but the present and future were worse, because they were less
comprehensible, and because, as she grew older, surprises and
inconsequences troubled her more than the worst certainties.

There was Mrs. Boulger, for instance. In the light, or rather the
darkness, of new developments, it might really be that Mrs. Boulger
had not meant to cut her, but had simply failed to recognize her.
Mrs. Lidcote had arrived at this hypothesis simply by listening to the
conversation of the persons sitting next to her on deck--two lively
young women with the latest Paris hats on their heads and the latest
New York ideas in them. These ladies, as to whom it would have been
impossible for a person with Mrs. Lidcote's old-fashioned categories to
determine whether they were married or unmarried, "nice" or "horrid," or
any one or other of the definite things which young women, in her
youth and her society, were conveniently assumed to be, had revealed
a familiarity with the world of New York that, again according to Mrs.
Lidcote's traditions, should have implied a recognized place in it. But
in the present fluid state of manners what did anything imply except
what their hats implied--that no one could tell what was coming next?

They seemed, at any rate, to frequent a group of idle and opulent people
who executed the same gestures and revolved on the same pivots as Mrs.
Lidcote's daughter and her friends: their Coras, Matties and Mabels
seemed at any moment likely to reveal familiar patronymics, and once
one of the speakers, summing up a discussion of which Mrs. Lidcote had
missed the beginning, had affirmed with headlong confidence: "Leila? Oh,
_Leila's_ all right."

Could it be _her_ Leila, the mother had wondered, with a sharp thrill of
apprehension? If only they would mention surnames! But their talk leaped
elliptically from allusion to allu