is, that means that he will drink himself into delirium
tremens in six months. His father ..." She stopped short, closing with
some haste the door to a vista, and poured herself another cup of
coffee. They were having breakfast in her room, both in negligee
and lacy caps, two singularly handsome representatives of differing
generations. Mrs. Marshall-Smith looked calm, Sylvia extremely
agitated. She had been awake at the early hour of deadly pale dawn
when a swift, long-barreled car had drawn up under the porte-cochere
and Arnold had been taken away under the guard of a short, broad,
brawny man with disproportionately long arms. She was not able to
swallow a mouthful of breakfast.

During the night, she had not looked an inch beyond her blind passion
of insistence. Now that Aunt Victoria yielded with so disconcerting
a suddenness, she faced with a pang what lay beyond. "Oh, Judith
wouldn't cast him off! She loves him so! She'll give him a chance. You
don't know Judith. She doesn't care about many things, but she gives
herself up absolutely to those that do matter to her. She adores
Arnold! It fairly frightened me to see how she was burning up when
he was near. She'll insist on his reforming, of course--she ought
to--but--"

"Suppose he doesn't reform to suit her," suggested Mrs.
Marshall-Smith, stirring her coffee. "He's been reformed at intervals
ever since he was fifteen. He never could stay through a whole term
in any decent boys' school." Here was a vista, ruthlessly opened.
Sylvia's eyes looked down it and shuddered. "Poor Arnold!" she said
under her breath, pushing away her untasted cup.

"I'm dull enough to find you take an odd way to show your sympathy for
him," murmured Mrs. Marshall-Smith, with none of the acidity the words
themselves seemed to indicate. She seemed indeed genuinely perplexed.
"It's not been exactly a hilarious element in _my_ life either. But
I've always tried to hold on to Arnold. I thought it my duty. And now,
since Felix Morrison has found this excellent specialist for me, it's
much easier. I telegraph to him and he comes at once and takes Arnold
back to his sanitarium, till he's himself again." For the first time
in weeks Morrison's name brought up between them no insistently
present, persistently ignored shadow. The deeper shadow now blotted
him out.

"But Aunt Victoria, it's for Judith to decide. _She_'ll do the right
thing."

"Sometimes people are thrown by circumstances into a s