hard.

Paul was unpacking his suit-case. "Great Scott! You nursed her six
months!" he said conclusively, over his shoulder. "Besides, you _had_ to
wean her--don't you remember?"

"Oh, yes; I remember," said Lydia. Her hands dropped to her sides.

"Don't they get over things quickly?" commented Paul, looking around at
the baby. "To see her creeping around like a little hop-toad and
squeaking that rubber bunny--why, I declare, I don't believe that
anything's been the matter with her at all. You and the doctor lost your
nerve, I guess."

Three or four days later he was called away again. Their regular routine
began. The long, slow days, slid past the house in Bellevue in endless,
dreamy procession. Ariadne grew fast, developing constantly new
faculties, new powers. By the end of the summer she was no longer a
baby, but a person. The young mother felt the same mysterious forces of
change and growth working irresistibly in herself. The long summer,
thoughtful and solitary, marked the end of one period in her life.

She looked forward shrinkingly to the winter. What would happen to this
new self whose growth in her was keeping pace with her child's? What
would happen next?

CHAPTER XXV

A BLACK MILESTONE

What happened was, in the first week of October, the sudden death of her
father. It was sudden only to his wife and daughter, whom, as always,
the Judge had tried to spare, at all costs, the knowledge of anything
unpleasant. Dr. Melton thought that perhaps the strong man's incredulity
of anything for him to fear had a good deal to do with his repeated
refusals to allow his wife or daughter to be warned of the danger of
apoplexy. Without that hypothesis, it seemed incredible, he told Mrs.
Sandworth, that so kind a man could be so cruel.

"Everything's incredible," murmured Mrs. Sandworth, her handkerchief at
her eyes, her loving heart aching for the newly-made widow, her lifelong
friend.

Her brother did not answer. He sat, gnawing savagely on his finger
nails, his thoughts centered, as always, on his darling
Lydia--fatherless.

He had prided himself on his acute insight into human nature in general,
and upon his specialized, intensified knowledge of those two women whom
he had known so long and studied so minutely; but "I've been a conceited
blockhead, and vanity's treacherous as well as damnable," he cried out
to his sister some days later, amazed beyond expression at the way in
which their loss affe