roundly to Marietta, would not have exchanged his good name for a much
larger income.

Indeed, the acridity which for Marietta lingered about the recollection
of their efforts to make themselves over did not exist in the more amply
satisfied mind of her mother. The difference showed itself visibly in
the contrast between the daughter's face, stamped with a certain tired,
unflagging intensity of endeavor, and the freshness of the older woman.
At thirty-two, Marietta looked, perhaps, no older than her age, but
obviously more worn by the strain of life than her mother at fifty-six.
Sometimes, as she noted in her mirror the sharp lines of a fatigue that
was almost bitterness, she experienced a certain unnerving uncertainty,
a total lack of zest for what she so eagerly struggled to attain, and
she envied her mother's single-minded satisfaction in getting what she
wanted.

Mrs. Emery had enjoyed the warfare of her life heartily; the victories
for their own sake, the defeats because they had spurred her on to fresh
and finally successful efforts, and the remembrance of both was sweet to
her. She loved her husband for himself and for what he had been able to
give her, and she loved her children ardently, although she had been
sorely vexed by her second son's unfortunate marriage. He had always
been a discordant note in the family concert, the veiled, unconscious,
uneasy skepticism of Marietta bursting out openly in Henry as a
careless, laughing cynicism, excessively disconcerting to his mother.
She sometimes thought he had married the grocer's daughter out of
"contrariness." The irritation which surrounded that event, and the play
of cross-purposes and discord which had filled the period until the
misguided young people had voluntarily exiled themselves to the Far
West, remained more of a sore spot in Mrs. Emery's mind than any blow
given or taken in her lifelong campaign for distinction. She admitted
frankly to herself that it was a relief that Harry was no longer near
her, although her mother's heart ached for the Harry he had seemed to
her before his rebellion. She fancied that she would enjoy him as of old
if the litter of inconvenient persons and facts lying between them could
but be cleared away; with a voluntary blindness not uncommon in parents,
refusing to recognize that these superficial differences were only the
outward expression of a fundamental alienation within. At all events, it
was futile to speculate about th