, who is ready to make you a
handsome allowance; though you will find that awkward at present, as he
is moving about so much. If you choose to feel aggrieved just now, you
might persuade your dear, prim Miss Dorman to either stay here with you
or take that little furnished house that is to rent on the lower road,
if you prefer that form of discomfort they call simplicity. You needn't
decide now; take time," she added genially, as if she was doing all that
could be asked.

When she ceased speaking, Sylvia, with bowed head, rose and quickly
left the room.

Then Mrs. Latham gave a sigh of relief that the interview was over, threw
the papers into a bureau drawer, called to the maid, who had been all the
while listening in the dressing room, to prepare to arrange her hair,
and, taking the chances that Sylvia would keep her room, at least for
some hours, wrote a hasty note to Monty Bell, inviting him to luncheon.

Meanwhile, Sylvia, instead of going to her room to cry, took her hat and
crept out into the lane that led to the woods. She must be quite away by
herself and gain time to think. This was a terrible sort of grief that
could neither be kept secret nor halved by sympathy, but must be worn in
the full glare of day. Her heart condemned her mother wholly, and she
understood why her father kept the silence of shame,--to whom could she
turn? As she gained the woods, and throwing herself down on a soft bed of
hemlock needles, closed her dry, burning eyes, two people seemed to stand
side by side and look at her pityingly,--Lavinia Dorman and Horace
Bradford,--and mentally she turned toward one and shrank from the other.
In Miss Lavinia she saw her only refuge, but between herself and Horace
the shadow of his upright mother seemed to intervene. What could they
think of her mother playing at Geisha girl in her own home at the very
hour of its wreck?

XII

HIS MOTHER

_July_ 1. It was several days after the festival before the news of the
Latham divorce was made definitely public by a paragraph under the
heading of "Society News," in one of the New York papers, though of
course the rumour had crept into every house on the Bluffs, by way of the
back stairs.

Miss Lavinia was greatly distressed, and yet did not know exactly how to
act in the matter; for though Mrs. Latham was seen driving by, as usual,
Sylvia made no sign.

We may read of such cases often enough, and yet when the blow falls in
the immediate neig