Sylvia flushed a little and looked towards her silently.  She had a partial, momentary vision of what the past two months must have been to her mother.  The tears stood in her eyes.  “Say, Mother dear,” she said in a quavering voice that tried to be light, “why don’t you eat some of these cakes to keep me company?  It’s ’most ten.  You must have had breakfast three hours ago.  It’d be fun!  I can’t begin to eat all these.”

“Well, I don’t care if I do,” answered Mrs. Marshall.  Sylvia laughed at the turn of her phrase and went into the dining-room.  Mrs. Marshall followed in a moment with a cup of hot chocolate and buttered toast.  Sylvia pulled her down and kissed her.  “You’d prescribe hot chocolate for anything from getting religion to a broken leg!” she said, laughing.  Her voice shook and her laugh ended in a half-sob.

“No—­oh no!” returned her mother quaintly.  “Sometimes hot milk is better.  Here, where is my share of those cakes?” She helped herself, went around the table, and sat down.  “Cousin Parnelia was here this morning,” she went on.  “Poor old idiot, she was certain that planchette would tell who it was that stole our chickens.  I told her to go ahead—­but planchette wouldn’t write.  Cousin Parnelia laid it to the blighting atmosphere of skepticism of this house.”

Sylvia laughed again.  Alone in the quiet house with her mother, refreshed by sleep, aroused by her bath, safe, sheltered, secure, she tried desperately not to think of the events of the day before.  But in spite of herself they came back to her in jagged flashes—­above all, the handsome blond face darkened by passion.  She shivered repeatedly, her voice was quite beyond her control, and once or twice her hands trembled so that she laid down her knife and fork.  She was silent and talkative by turns—­a phenomenon of which Mrs. Marshall took no outward notice, although when the meal was finished she sent her daughter out into the piercing December air with the command to walk six miles before coming in.  Sylvia recoiled at the prospect of solitude.  “Oh, I’d rather go and skate with Judy and Larry!” she cried.

“Well, if you skate hard enough,” her mother conceded.

* * * * *

The day after her return Sylvia had a long letter from Jermain Fiske, a letter half apologetic, half aggrieved, passionately incredulous of the seriousness of the break between them, and wholly unreconciled to it.  The upshot of his missive was that he was sorry if he had done anything to offend her, but might he be everlastingly confounded if he thought she had the slightest ground for complaint!  Everything had been going on so swimmingly—­his father had taken the greatest notion to her—­had said (the very evening she’d cut and run that queer way) that if he married that rippingly pretty Marshall girl he could have the house and estate at Mercerton and enough to run it on, and could practise as much or as little law as he pleased and go at once