Mary's car had left the Pennsylvania station on the fourteenth of
March; she half expected to see several new public buildings, and she
found herself wondering if her old friends were much changed.

People capable of the deepest and most enduring impressions often
receive these impressions upon apparently shallow waters. They feel
the blow, but it skims the surface at the moment, to choose its place
and sink slowly, surely, into the thinking brain.

Betty's immediate attitude toward the tragic fact of Harriet's death
was almost spectacular. She felt herself the central figure in a
thrilling and awful drama, its horror stifling for a moment the hope
that the man whose footsteps followed closely upon that tramping of
heavy feet would fulfil his promise and take her in his arms. And when
he did her sense of personal responsibility left her, as well as her
clearer comprehension of what had happened to bring about this climax
so long and so ardently desired.

But she had not seen Senator North since the day following the
funeral. Mrs. Madison had announced with emphasis that she had had as
much as she could stand and would not remain another day in the
Adirondacks; she wanted Narragansett and the light and agreeable
society of many Southern friends who did not have frequent tragedies
in their families. Betty telegraphed for rooms at one of the
large hotels at the Pier, and thereafter had the satisfaction of
seeing her mother gossip contentedly for hours with other ladies of
lineage and ante-bellum reminiscences, or sit with even deeper
contentment for intermediate hours upon the veranda of the Casino.
When she herself was bored beyond endurance, she crossed the bay and
lunched or dined in Newport, where she had many friends; and she spent