tween her pleasure as a mother and
her obligation to her son's father, to her parents' son-in-law--her
devotions at the shrine of Appearances.

It was in the fall of the year she was twenty-five--eight years and a
half after she left Battle Field--that Hampden Scarborough reappeared
upon the surface of her life.

On a September afternoon in that year Olivia, descending from the train
at Saint X, was almost as much embarrassed as pleased by her changed
young cousin rushing at her with great energy--"Dear, dear Olivia! And
hardly any different--how's the baby? No--not Fred, but Fred Junior, I
mean. In some ways you positively look younger. You know, you were SO
serious at college!"

"But you--I don't quite understand how any one can be so changed,
yet--recognizable. I guess it's the plumage. You're in a new
edition--an edition deluxe."

Pauline's dressmakers were bringing out the full value of her height
and slender, graceful strength. Her eyes, full of the same old
frankness and courage, now had experience in them, too. She was wearing
her hair so that it fell from her brow in two sweeping curves
reflecting the light in sparkles and flashes. Her manner was still
simple and genuine--the simplicity and genuineness of knowledge now,
not of innocence. Extremes meet--but they remain extremes. Her
"plumage" was a fashionable dress of pale blue cloth, a big beplumed
hat to match, a chiffon parasol like an azure cloud, at her throat a
sapphire pendant, about her neck and swinging far below her waist a
chain of sapphires.

"And the plumage just suits her," thought Olivia. For it seemed to her
that her cousin had more than ever the quality she most admired--the
quality of individuality, of distinction. Even in her way of looking
clean and fresh she was different, as if those prime feminine
essentials were in her not matters of frequent reacquirement but
inherent and inalienable, like her brilliance of eyes and smoothness of
skin.

Olivia felt a slight tugging at the bag she was carrying. She
looked--an English groom in spotless summer livery was touching his hat
in respectful appeal to her to let go. "Give Albert your checks, too,"
said Pauline, putting her arm around her cousin's waist to escort her
down the platform. At the entrance, with a group of station loungers
gaping at it, was a phaeton-victoria lined with some cream-colored
stuff like silk, the horses and liveried coachman rigid. "She's giving
Sai