With the astonishingly quick shifting of
viewpoint of the young, she no longer felt the least anxiety that her
home, or even that she herself should make a good impression on this
evidently quite negligible person. Her anguish about the ceremony of
opening the door seemed years behind her. She examined with care all
the minutiae of the handsome, unindividualized costume of black velvet
worn by their visitor, but turned an absent ear to her talk, which
brought out various facts relating to a numerous family of young
children. "I have six living," said Mrs. Fiske, not meeting Mrs.
Marshall's eyes as she spoke, and stirring her tea slowly, "I lost
four at birth."

Sylvia was indeed slightly interested to learn through another turn of
the conversation that the caller, who looked to her unsympathetic eyes
any age at all, had been married at eighteen, and that that was only
thirteen years ago. Sylvia thought she certainly looked older than
thirty-one, advanced though that age was.

The call passed with no noteworthy incidents beyond a growing wonder
in Sylvia's mind that the brilliant and dashing old Colonel, after
his other matrimonial experiences, should have picked out so dull and
colorless a wife. She was not even pretty, not at all pretty, in spite
of her delicate, regular features and tall figure. Her hair was dry
and thin, her eyes lusterless, her complexion thick, with brown
patches on it, and her conversation was of a domesticity unparalleled
in Sylvia's experience. She seemed oddly drawn to Mrs. Marshall,
although that lady was now looking rather graver than was her wont,
and talked to her of the overflowing Fiske nursery with a loquacity
which was evidently not her usual habit. Indeed, she said naively, as
she went away, that she had been much relieved to find Mrs. Marshall
so approachable. "One always thinks of University families as so
terribly learned, you know," she said, imputing to her hostess, with a
child's tactlessness, an absence of learning like her own. "I really
dreaded to come--I go out so little, you know--but Jerry and the
Colonel thought I ought, you know--and now I've really enjoyed it--and
if Miss Marshall will come, Jerry and the Colonel will be quite
satisfied. And so, of course, will I." With which rather jerky
valedictory she finally got herself out of the house.

Sylvia looked at her mother inquiringly. "If I go where?" she asked.
Something must have taken place while she was out of the r