going like that, are you?" he asked, with glaring
eye-glasses.

"Like what?" she faltered, lifting a conscious hand to the velvet at
her throat.

"With your hair in such a fearful mess. Have you been shampooing it?
You look like the Brant girl at the end of a tennis-match."

The Brant girl was their horror--the horror of all right-thinking
Wentworth; a laced, whale-boned, frizzle-headed, high-heeled daughter
of iniquity, who came--from New York, of course--on long, disturbing,
tumultuous visits to a Wentworth aunt, working havoc among the
freshmen, and leaving, when she departed, an angry wake of criticism
that ruffled the social waters for weeks. _She_, too, had tried her
hand at Guy--with ludicrous unsuccess. And now, to be compared to
her--to be accused of looking "New Yorky!" Ah, there are times when
husbands are obtuse; and Ransom, as he stood there, thick and yet
juiceless, in his dry legal middle age, with his wiry dust-coloured
beard, and his perpetual _pince-nez_, seemed to his wife a sudden
embodiment of this traditional attribute. Not that she had ever fancied
herself, poor soul, a "_femme incomprise_." She had, on the contrary,
prided herself on being understood by her husband, almost as much as on
her own complete comprehension of him. Wentworth laid a good deal of
stress on "motives"; and Margaret Ransom and her husband had dwelt in a
complete community of motive. It had been the proudest day of her life
when, without consulting her, he had refused an offer of partnership in
an eminent New York firm because he preferred the distinction of
practising in Wentworth, of being known as the legal representative of
the University. Wentworth, in fact, had always been the bond between
the two; they were united in their veneration for that estimable seat
of learning, and in their modest yet vivid consciousness of possessing
its tone. The Wentworth "tone" is unmistakable: it permeates every part
of the social economy, from the _coiffure_ of the ladies to the
preparation of the food. It has its sumptuary laws as well as its
curriculum of learning. It sits in judgment not only on its own
townsmen but on the rest of the world--enlightening, criticising,
ostracizing a heedless universe--and non-conformity to Wentworth
standards involves obliteration from Wentworth's consciousness.

In a world without traditions, without reverence, without stability,
such little expiring centres of prejudice and precedent make an
irr