the Judge hurriedly into the hall, and, "It was that Rankin!"
she cried, the slam of the door underscoring her words, "and _I_ believe
Marius Melton knew he was going on that car and made Lydia late on
purpose."

Judge Emery was in the state in which of late the end of the day's work
found him--overwhelmingly fatigued. He had not an ounce of superfluous
energy to answer his wife's tocsin. "Well, what if it was?" he said.

"They'll be an hour and a half together--alone--more alone than anywhere
except on a desert island. Alone--an hour and a half!"

"Oh, Susan! If Paul can't in three months make more headway than Rankin
can tear down in an hour and a half--"

She raged at him, revolted at the calmness with which he was
unbuttoning his overcoat and unwinding his muffler, "You don't
understand--_anything_! I'm not afraid she'll elope with him--Paul's got
her too solid for that--Rankin probably won't say anything of _that_
kind! But he'll put notions in her head again--she's so impressionable.
And she says queer things now, once in a while, if she's left alone a
minute. She needs managing. She's not like that levelheaded, sensible
Madeleine Hollister. Lydia has to be guided, and you don't see
anything--you leave it all to me."

She was almost crying with nervous exhaustion. That Lydia's course ran
smooth through a thousand complications was not accomplished without an
incalculable expenditure of nervous force on her mother's part. Dr.
Melton had several times of late predicted that he would have his old
patient back under his care again. Judge Emery, remembering this
prophecy, was now moved by his wife's pale agitation to a
heart-sickening mixture of apprehension for her and of recollection of
his own extreme discomfort whenever she was sick. He tried to soothe
her. "But, Susan, there's nothing we can do about it," he said
reasoningly, hanging up his overcoat, blandly ignorant that her
irritation came largely from his failure to fall in with her conception
of the moment as a tragic one.

"You could _care_ something about it," she said bitterly, standing with
all her wraps on. The telephone bell rang. She motioned him back. "No; I
might as well go first as last. It'll be something I'd have to see
about, anyway."

As he hesitated in the middle of the hall, longing to betake himself to
a deep easy chair and a moment's relaxation, and not daring to do so, he
was startled by an electric change in his wife's voice. "You'r