shame spread through her at the possibility that she had seemed
common to an infinitely finer delicacy than hers.




XIII


Most of these circumstances Linda Hallet quietly recalled sitting
with her husband in the house that had been occupied by the
Lowries'. A letter from Pleydon had taken her into a past seven
years gone by; while ordinarily her memory was indistinct;
ordinarily she was fully occupied by the difficulties, or rather
compromises, of the present. But, in the tranquil open glow of a
Franklin stove and the withdrawn intentness of Arnaud reading, her
mind had returned to the distressed period of her wedding.

Elouise Lowrie--Amelia was dead--sunk in a stupor of extreme old
age, her bloodless hands folded in an irreproachable black surah
silk lap, sat beyond the stove; and Lowrie, Linda's elder child,
five and a half, together with his sister Vigne, had been long
asleep above. Linda was privately relieved by this: her children
presented enormous obligations. The boy, already at a model school,
appalled her inadequate preparations by his flashes of perceptive
intelligence; while she was frankly abashed at the delicate rosy
perfection of her daughter.

The present letter was the third she had received from Dodge
Pleydon, whom she had not seen since her marriage. At first he had