had
already taken, and when I asked what in the world she was thinking
about--meaning, of course--"

Lydia sat silent, looking at her useless cards during the rest of the
narration of her comic speech. She was reflecting rather sadly that she
had been very foolish to think, even in a thoughtless impulse, of
telling Madeleine the story she had so impetuously begun. After a time
it came to her, as a commentary of the little incident, that neither
could she get anything from Marietta in the matter. At the end of the
party, she and her mother walked together to the street-cars, but she
still said nothing of what was in her mind. She would not admit to
herself that her mother would receive it as she felt sure Marietta and
Madeleine would, but--she dared not risk putting her to the test. It was
a period in Lydia's life when she was constantly in fear of tests
applied to the people she loved and longed to admire.

During the half-hour's noisy journey out to Bellevue--the unhackneyed
name that had been selected for the new and fashionable suburb she
inhabited--she had eliminated from this crisis in her mind, one by one,
all the people in her circle. Dr. Melton was out of town. Otherwise she
would have gone to him at once. Mrs. Sandworth without her brother was a
cipher with no figure before it. Her father?--she realized suddenly that
it was the first time she had ever thought of going to her father with a
perplexity. No; she knew too little about his view of things. She had
never talked with him of anything but the happenings of the day. Flora
Burgess--devoted Flora? Lydia smiled ruefully as she thought of the
attitude Flora Burgess would be sure to take.

It finally came to the point where there was no one left but Paul; and
Paul ought not to be worried with domestic questions lest his capacity
for business be impaired. She had a deep inculcated sense of the
necessity and duty of "doing her share," as the phrase had gone in the
various exhortations addressed to her before her marriage. The next few
years would be critical ones in Paul's career, and the road must be
straight and clear before his feet--the road that led to Success. No one
had voiced a doubt that this road was not coincident with all other
desirable ones; no one had suggested that the same years would be
critical in other directions and would be certain to be terribly and
irrevocably determinative of his future relation to his wife.

Lydia, ardently and naive