and your father
appears to have been too mealy-mouthed to explain,--we have agreed to
separate. No need of your getting tragic, there are no public
recriminations on either side, no vulgar infidelity or common
quarrelling, everything quite amicable, I assure you. Simply we find our
tastes totally different, and have done so for several years. Mr.
Latham's ambitions are wholly financial, mine are social. He repelled and
ignored my best friends, and as we are in every way independent of each
other, he has been wise enough to avoid possible and annoying
complications by standing out of my way and making it easy for me to
legalize the arrangement and readjust myself completely to new
conditions."

"But what of Carthy and me?" gasped Sylvia, in a voice so choked and
hollow that the older woman hesitated, but for a single instant only.
"Have neither you nor father thought of us? Where do we belong? Where is
our home? Can people who have once loved each other forget their children
and throw them off so? Does God allow it? You must have cared for father
once, for I remember when I was a little girl you told me that you called
me Sylvia, to have my name as nearly like father's--Sylvester--as
possible. Have you forgotten it all, that you can do this thing, when you
say in the same breath that father has done no evil?"

"Don't be tragic, Sylvia, and rake up things that have nothing to do with
the matter. As to your brother, it was your father's foolish severity
about a card debt, and insisting upon placing him away from me, that is
primarily responsible for the divorce, not any wish of mine to exile
Carthy. And you ask where your home is, as if I had turned you out, when
you have just refused an offer that any unmarried society woman, who can
afford it, would clutch."

Sylvia sat silent, looking blindly before her. Her mother waited a
moment, as if expecting some reply, and then continued: "Now that the
matter is virtually settled, I suppose in a few days the papers will
save me the trouble of announcing it. Under the circumstances, I shall
rent the Newport house for the season, as I have had several good
offers, and go abroad for two or three months on the continent, so that
before my return the town house will be redecorated and everything will
be readjusted for a successful winter. You had better take a few days
before deciding what to do. You can, of course, come with me, if you are
not sick of travel, or go to your father