there for some minutes, talking together in low tones. Sylvia,
absorbed in watching the play of light on Aunt Victoria's smooth
cheek, heard but a few words of what passed between them. She had a
vague impression that Professor Saunders continually began sentences
starting firmly with "But" and ending somehow on quite another note.
She felt dimly that Aunt Victoria was less calmly passive than usual
in a conversation, that it was not only the enchanting rising and
falling inflections of her voice which talked, but her eyes, her arms,
her whole self. Once she laid her hand for an instant on Professor
Saunders' arm.

More than that Sylvia could not remember, even when she was asked
later to repeat as much as she could of what she had heard. She was
resolving when she was grown-up to have a ruffle of creamy lace
falling away from her neck and wrists as Aunt Victoria did. She had
not only forgotten Arnold's story, she had forgotten that such a boy
existed. She was living in a world all made up of radiance and bloom,
lace and sunshine and velvet, and bright hair and gleaming cloth and
smooth voices and the smell of violets.

After a time she was aware that Professor Saunders shook hands and
turned back up the steps. Aunt Victoria began to move with her slow
grace along the road towards home, and Sylvia to follow, soaking
herself in an impression of supreme suavity.

When, after the walk through the beech-woods, they reached the edge of
the Marshall field, they saw a stiff plume of blue smoke stand up over
the shack by the garden and, as they approached, heard a murmur of
voices. Mrs. Marshall-Smith stopped, furled her parasol, and surveyed
the scene within. Her sister-in-law, enveloped in a large blue apron,