r?"

Mrs. Howard handed her the telegram.

"Your father," she said.

Elsie Howard read the simple announcement in silence. Then she looked
up, the last trace of an old bitterness in her faint smile.

"We will miss him," she said.

"Elsie!" cried her mother. It was a tone the girl had never heard from
her before. Her eyes fell.

"No, it wasn't nice to say it. I am sorry. But I can't forget what life
was with him." She raised her eyes to her mother's. "It was simply hell,
mother; you can't have forgotten. You have said it yourself so often. We
can not deny that it is a relief to know--"

"Hush, Elsie, never let me hear you say anything like that again."

"Forgive me, mother," said the girl with quick remorse. "I never will. I
don't think I have ever felt that death makes such things so different,
and I didn't realize how you would--look at it."

"My child, he was your father," said Mrs. Howard in a low voice. Then
Elsie saw the tears in her mother's eyes.

* * * * *

"_Such_ a shock to her," Mrs. Pendleton murmured, sympathetically, to
Elsie. "I know, Miss Elsie; I can feel for her--" Elsie mechanically
thought of the last hours of Mr. Pendleton, then recalled herself with a
start. "Death always _is_ a shock," Mrs. Pendleton finished gracefully,
"even when one most expects it. You must let me know if there is
anything I can do."

Later in the evening she communicated the astonishing news to Mrs.
Hilary, who ejaculated freely: "Only fancy!" and "How very
extraordinary!"

"Didn't you think he had been dead a hundred years?" exclaimed Mrs.
Pendleton.

"One never can tell in the states," responded Mrs. Hilary
conservatively. "Divorce is so common over here. It isn't the thing at
all in England, you know."

Mrs. Pendleton stared.

"But they were not divorced, only separated. Do you never do that--in
England?"

"Divorced people are not received at court, you know," explained Mrs.
Hilary.

Mrs. Pendleton's glance lingered upon the Englishwoman's immobile face
and a laugh broke into her words.

"But when you are in Rome, you do as the Romans--is that it, Mrs.
Hilary?" But the shot glanced off harmlessly from the thick armor of
British literalness.

"In Rome divorce doesn't exist at all," she graciously informed her
companion. "The Romish church does not permit it, you know."

The American woman looked at the Englishwoman more in sorrow than in
anger.

"How," she refl