been enraged at the wrong, he had every reason to feel, she had done
him. Then his anger had dissolved into a meager correspondence of
outward and obvious facts. There was so much that she had been unable
to explain. He had always been impatient, even contemptuous, of the
emotion that made her surrender to him unthinkable--Linda realized
now that it had been the strongest impulse of her life--and, of
course, she had never accounted for the practically unbalanced
enmity of her mother.

The latter had deepened to an incredible degree, so much so that Mr.
Moses Feldt, though he had never taken an actual part in it--such
bitterness was entirely outside his generous sentimentality--had
become acutely uncomfortable in his own home, imploring Linda, with
ready tears, to be kinder to her mama. Judith, too, had grown
cutting, jealous of Linda's serenity of youth, as her appearance
showed the effect of her wasting emotions. Things quite
extraordinary had happened: once Linda's skin had been almost
seriously affected by an irritation that immediately followed the
trace of her powder-puff; and at several times she had had clumsily
composed anonymous notes of a most distressing nature.

She had wondered, calmly enough, which of the two bitter women were
responsible, and decided that it was her mother. At this the
situation at the Feldts', increasingly strained, had become an
impossibility. Arnaud Hallet, after his first visit, had soon
returned. There was no more mention of his money; but every time he
saw her he asked her again, in his special manner--a formality
flavored by a slight diffident humor--to marry him. Arnaud's
proposals had alternated with Pleydon's utterly different demand.