it absolutely wrong, she would even have
followed Martin's suggestion, and put on a soupcon of rouge; but by the
time she was summoned to the carriage the feverishness of her effort at
self-control had done the work, and her husband had paid her the
compliment of observing that she looked pretty enough for two.

Nuttie heard them drive off, with a burst of fresh misery of
indignation against her mother--now as a slave and a victim--now as
forgetting her old home. It was chiefly in mutterings; she had pretty
well used up her tears, for, unconsciously perhaps, she had worked them
up as a defensive weapon against being carried to the party; and now
that the danger was over, her head throbbed, her eyes burnt, and her
throat ached too much for her to wish to cry any more. She had not felt
physically like this, since the day, seven years ago, when she and
Mildred Sharpe had been found suspiciously toying with the key of the
arithmetic, and had been debarred from trying for the prize. Then she
felt debased and guilty; now she felt, or ought to feel, like a heroine
maintaining the right.

She got up and set herself to rights as well as she could. Martin, who
had been allowed to know that she had lost an old friend, petted and
pitied her, and brought her a substantial meal with her tea, after
which she set out to evensong at the church at the end of the square,
well veiled under a shady hat, and with a conviction that something
ought to happen.

Nothing did, however, happen; she met no one whom she knew, the psalms
were not particularly appropriate, and her attention wandered away to
the scene at home. She did not come back, as she was sure she ought to
have done, soothed, exhilarated, and refreshed, but rather in a rasped
state of mind, and a conscience making a vehement struggle to believe
itself in the right--a matter in which she thoroughly succeeded.

She wrote a long letter to Mary Nugent, and shed some softer tears over
it, then she built a few castles on her future escape from the power of
her father; and then she picked up Reata, and became absorbed in it,
regretting only the weakness of her eyes, and the darkening of the
summer evening.

She was still reading when the others came home. Her mother kissed
her, but looked so languid and tired-out that Nuttie was shocked, and
Martin declared that she ought not to go down to dinner.

A tete-a-tete dinner between father and daughter was too dreadful to
Alice's i