for her afternoon drive, and to leave Arnold. Sylvia opened the door a
crack and asked, "Where's Father?"

"Oh, gone back to the University this long time," answered her mother
in her usual tone. Sylvia came down the stairs slowly and took her
seat in the carriage beside Aunt Victoria with none of her usual
demonstrative show of pleasure.

"Don't you like my dress?" asked Aunt Victoria, as they drove away.
"You don't even notice it, and I put it on 'specially to please
you--you're the one discriminating critic in this town!" As Sylvia
made no answer to this sally, she went on: "It's hard to get into
alone, too. I had to ask the hotel chambermaid to hook it up on the
shoulders."

Thus reminded of Pauline, Sylvia could have but inattentive eyes for
the creation of amber silk and lace, and brown fur, which seductively
clad the handsome body beside her.

Mrs. Marshall-Smith gave her favorite a penetrating look. "What's the
matter with you, Sylvia?" she asked in the peremptory note which her
sweet voice of many modulations could startlingly assume on occasion.
Sylvia had none of Judith's instant pugnacious antagonism to any
peremptory note. She answered in one imploring rush of a question,
"Aunt Victoria, why should _Father_ be so very mad at Pauline?"

Mrs. Marshall-Smith looked a little startled at this direct reference
to the veiled storm-center of the day, but not at all displeased. "Oh,
your mother told him? Was he so very angry?" she asked with a slight
smile.