about Lydia in her
childhood--in the days before Miss Bennett came to them. After some
tremendous scene of naughtiness and punishment, she had come to him and
said: "Father, if you're not angry at me any more, I'm not angry at
you." It was characteristic of her still. She was not afraid to come
forward and make up, but she was shy with the spoken word. She couldn't
make an emotional apology, but she managed to convey in all sorts of
dumb ways that she wanted to be friends--she contrived to remember some
long ungratified wish of Benny's, whether it were a present, or a
politeness to some old friend, or sometimes only an errand that Benny
had never been able to get her to do. There was always a definite symbol
that Lydia was sorry, and she was always forgiven.

Part of Eleanor's sense of her own superiority to the world lay in being
more than usually impervious to emotion. Besides she had expressed
herself satisfactorily at the time by leaving the house, so that she
forgave too. Only of course a scene like that is never without
consequences--everybody's endurance had snapped a few more strands like
a fraying rope. And there were consequences, too, in Lydia's own nature.
She seemed to have become permanently wrong-headed and violent on any
subject even remotely connected with the district attorney.

This was evident a few days later when a voice proclaiming itself that
of Judge Homans' secretary asked her if she could make it convenient to
stop at the judge's chambers that afternoon to give the court some
information in regard to a former maid of hers--Evans. Lydia's tone
showed that it was not at all convenient. It seemed at one instant as if
she were about to refuse point-blank to go. Then she yielded, and from
that minute it became clear that her mind was continually occupied with
the prospect of the visit.

Late in the afternoon she appeared before the judge's desk in his little
room, lined with shelves of calf-bound volumes. It was a chilly November
afternoon, and she had just come from tea at the golf club after
eighteen holes. She was wrapped in a bright golden-brown coat, and a
tomato-colored hat was pulled down over her brows.

The judge, for no reason ascertainable, had imagined Miss Thorne, the
landed proprietor, the owner of jewels of value, as a dignified woman of
thirty. He looked up in surprise over his spectacles. His first idea--he
lived much out of the world--was that a mistake had been made and that