very inch of the ground. Her
expectancy grew more and more tense as her eagerness rose. During the
long year that Lydia was in Europe, receiving a final gloss, even higher
than that imparted by the expensive and exclusive girls' school where
she had spent the years between fourteen and eighteen, Mrs. Emery laid
her plans and arranged her life with a fervent devotion to one end--the
success of Lydia's first season in society. Every room in the house
seemed to her vision to stand in a bright vacancy awaiting the arrival
of the debutante.

CHAPTER II

AMERICAN BEAUTIES

On the morning of Lydia's long-expected return, as Mrs. Emery moved
restlessly about the large double parlors opening out on a veranda where
the vines were already golden in the September sunlight, it seemed to
her that the very walls were blank in hushed eagerness and that the
chairs and tables turned faces like hers, tired with patience, toward
the open door. She had not realized until the long separation was almost
over how unendurably she had missed her baby girl, as she still thought
of the tall girl of nineteen. She could not wait the few hours that were
left. Her fortitude had given way just too soon. She must have the dear
child now, now, in her arms.

She moved absently a spray of goldenrod which hid a Fra Angelico angel
over the mantel and noted with dramatic self-pity that her hand was
trembling. She sat down suddenly, and lost herself in a vain attempt to
recall the well-beloved sound of Lydia's fresh young voice. A knot came
in her throat, and she covered her face with her large, white,
carefully-manicured hands.

Marietta came in briskly a few moments later, bringing a bouquet of
asters from her own garden. She was dressed, as always, with a severe
reticence in color and line which, though due to her extreme need for
economy, nevertheless gave to the rather spare outlines of her tall
figure a distinction, admired by Endbury under the name of stylishness.
Her rapid step had carried her half-way across the wide room before she
saw to her surprise that her mother, usually so self-contained, was
giving way to an inexplicable emotion.

"Good gracious, Mother!" she began in the energetic fashion which was
apt to make her most neutral remarks sound combative.

Mrs. Emery dried her eyes with a gesture of protest, adjusted her gray
pompadour deftly, and cut off her daughter's remonstrance, "Oh, you
needn't tell me I'm foolish, Marietta