d that Lydia had asked her to go to Newport
for a month. O'Bannon turned on her sharply.

"And are you going?"

She said no, but it did not save her from his contempt.

"I don't see how you can be a friend of that woman's, Eleanor," he said.

"Lydia has the most attaching qualities when you know her, Dan."

"Attaching!" he broke out with a suppressed irritation she had never
seen--a strange hate of her, Eleanor, for saying such a thing.
"Arrogant, inflexible, using all her gifts--her brains and her
incredible beauty--just to advance her own selfish ends!"

An impulse based partly on pure loyalty but partly on the idea that she
could improve her position by showing her friend was not quite a monster
made her answer, "You wouldn't believe, Dan, how if she really cares for
you she can be tender almost clinging."

"For God's sake don't let's talk of her!" said O'Bannon, and it was on
this note that they parted.

He wrote to her only once, though his letters to his mother were always
at her disposal. She saw a great deal of the old lady, who developed a
mild pleurisy as soon as her son's back was turned and didn't want Dan
told of it. Eleanor spent most of that hot August taking care of her.

"I want him to have an uninterrupted holiday," said Mrs. O'Bannon
firmly. "He hasn't been well. He doesn't sleep as he ought to, and he's
cross, and you know it's not like Dan to be cross."

On the last day of August he was back, lean and sunburned, announcing
himself to be in excellent condition. His first question was about the
Thorne case.

"Are you anxious about it?" said his mother.

"Not a bit. They can't reverse us," he answered.

After Labor Day Lydia moved back to her Long Island house, and she was
there when the decision in her case was handed down. The verdict of the
lower court was sustained. It was a great blow to her--perhaps the first
real blow she had ever received. She had so firmly made up her mind that
the former verdict had been the result of undue influence of the
district attorney that she had thought it impossible that the higher
court would uphold it. Another triumph for "that man!" The idea of
punishment was horrible to her--to be fined as a criminal. She still did
not conceive it a possibility that she could be sent to prison.

"I can think of lots of ways in which I'd rather spend a thousand
dollars," was her only comment.

But day and night she thought of the scene in court when she must
pre