e matter, since the width of the
continent and her son's intense distaste for letter-writing separated
them. She had come, therefore, to turn all her attention and proud
affection on her youngest child.

It seemed to her sometimes that Lydia had been granted her by a
merciful Providence in order that she might make that "fresh start all
over again" which is the never-realized ideal of erring humanity.
Marietta had been a young lady fourteen years before, and fourteen years
meant much--meant everything to people who progressed as fast as the
Emerys. Uncertain of themselves, they had not ventured to launch
Marietta boldly upon the waves of a society the chart of which was so
new to them. She had no coming-out party. She simply put on long skirts,
coiled her black hair on top of her head, and began going to evening
parties with a few young men who were amused by the tart briskness of
her tongue and attracted by the comeliness of her healthful youth. She
had married the first man who proposed to her--a young insurance agent.
Since then they had lived in a very comfortable, middling state of
harmony, apparently on about the same social scale as Marietta's
parents. That this feat was accomplished on a much smaller income was
due to Marietta's unrivaled instinct and trained capacity for keeping up
appearances.

All this history had been creditable, but nothing more; and Mrs. Emery
often looked at her elder daughter with compunction for her own earlier
ignorance and helplessness. She could have done so much more for
Marietta if she had only known how. Mrs. Mortimer was, however, a rather
prickly personality with whom to attempt to sympathize, and in general
her mother felt the usual -in-law conclusion about her daughter's life:
that Marietta could undoubtedly have done better than to marry her
industrious, negligible husband, but that, on the whole, she might have
done worse; and it was much to be hoped that her little boy would
resemble the Emerys and not the Mortimers.

No such philosophical calm restrained her emotions about Lydia. She was
in positive beauty and charm all that poor Marietta had not been, and
she was to have in the way of backing and management all that poor
Marietta had lacked. It seemed to Mrs. Emery that her whole life had
been devoted to learning what to do and what not to do for Lydia. As the
time of action drew nearer she nerved herself for the campaign with a
finely confident feeling that she knew e