ough vague tears, "To-morrow we will go together to her, my
blessed son."

"I cannot ask you to do that; there are reasons--I will bring Sylvia to
you later, when her mother has gone," he answered hastily, resolving that
he would do anything to shield her self-respect from the possible shock
of meeting that other mother.

"Horace, you forget yourself, and your father too," she said almost
sternly. "I am country bred, but still I know the world's ways. Your
father's wife will go first to greet her who will be yours; you need not
fear for me," and he sat silent.

That next afternoon, when Horace's first and last love met, they looked
into each other's hearts and saw the same image there, while Mrs. Latham
lay on the lounge in her room, raging within, that again her tongue had
failed her in her own house, and realizing that, woman of the world as
she aimed to be, the "egg woman" had rendered her helpless by mere force
of homely courtesy. Presently she rose, and railing and scolding the
bewildered maid, sent a message to New York to transfer her passage, if
possible, to an earlier steamer.

XIII

GOSSIP AND THE BUG HUNTERS

_July_ 18. It is such a deadly sin to marry outside of the limited set
that is socially registered, that I now understand why many of the
Whirlpoolers are mentally inbred, almost to the vanishing point, so that
they have lost the capacity of thinking for themselves, and must
necessarily follow a leader.

Sylvia Latham's engagement to Horace Bradford has caused a much greater
sensation than her mother's divorce. To be sure, every one who has met
Horace, not only fails to find anything objectionable about him, but
accords him great powers of attraction; yet they declare in the same
breath that the affair will not do for a precedent, and deplore its
radical influence.

To-day we have settled down to midsummer quiet and to a period of silence
after much talking. The Bluffs are quite deserted except by a bevy of
children left with governesses while their parents are yachting or in
Europe, and the servants in charge of the various houses. But a trail of
discontent is left behind, for these servants, by their conspicuous
idleness, are having a very demoralizing effect upon the help in the
plain houses hereabout, who are necessarily expected to do more work for
lower wages.

I am fully realizing, also, that the excitement of living other people's
lives, which we cannot control, through sympat