paid for her present damn Olympian serenity."

Sylvia heard her mother begin to clear off the table. There was a
rattle of dishes through which her voice rose impatiently. "Oh,
Elliott, why be so melodramatic always, and spoil so much good
language! She did only what every girl brought up as she was, would
have done. And, anyhow, are you so very sure that in your heart
you're not so awfully hard on her because you're envious of that very
prosperity?"

He admitted, with acrimony, the justice of this thrust. "Very likely.
Very likely!--everything base and mean in me, that you keep down,
springs to life in me at her touch. I dare say I do envy her--I'm
quite capable of that--am I not her brother, with the same--"

Mrs. Marshall said hastily: "Hush! Hush! Here's Judith. For Heaven's
sake don't let the child hear you!"

For the first time the idea penetrated Sylvia's head that she ought
not to have listened. Buddy was now soundly asleep: she detached her
hand from his, and went soberly along the hall into her own room. She
did not want to see her father just then.

A long time after, Mother called up to say that Aunt Victoria had come
for her afternoon drive, and to leave Arnold. Sylvia opened the door a
crack and asked, "Where's Father?"

"Oh, gone back to the University this long time," answered her mother
in her usual tone. Sylvia came down the stairs slowly and took her
seat in the carriage beside Aunt Victoria with none of her usual
demonstrative show of pleasure.

"Don't you like my dress?" asked Aunt Victoria, as they drove away.
"You don't even notice it, and I put it on 'specially to please
you--you're the one discriminating critic in this town!" As Sylvia
made no answer to this sally, she went on: "It's hard to get into
alone, too. I had to ask the hotel chambermaid to hook it up on the
shoulders."

Thus reminded of Pauline, Sylvia could have but inattentive eyes for
the creation of amber silk and lace, and brown fur, which seductively
clad the handsome body beside her.

Mrs. Marshall-Smith gave her favorite a penetrating look. "What's the
matter with you, Sylvia?" she asked in the peremptory note which her
sweet voice of many modulations could startlingly assume on occasion.
Sylvia had none of Judith's instant pugnacious antagonism to any
peremptory note. She answered in one imploring rush of a question,
"Aunt Victoria, why should _Father_ be so very mad at Pauline?"

Mrs. Marshall-Smith looked a lit