“We were both of us,” commented Mrs. Marshall-Smith dryly, “somewhat mistaken about the degree of seriousness with which Judith would take the information.”

Sylvia forgot her vexation and sprang loyally to Judith’s defense.  “Why, of course she takes it like a trained nurse, like a doctor—­feels it a purely medical affair—­as I suppose it is.  We might have known she’d feel that way.  But as to how she really feels inside, personally, you can’t tell anything by her letter!  You probably couldn’t tell anything by her manner if she were here.  You never can.  She may be simply wild about a thing inside, but you’d never guess.”

Mrs. Marshall-Smith ventured to express some skepticism as to the existence of volcanic feelings always so sedulously concealed.  “After all, can you be so very sure that she is ever ‘simply wild’ if she never shows anything?”

“Oh, you’re sure, all right, if you’ve lived with her—­you feel it.  And then, after about so long a time of keeping it down, she breaks loose and does something awful, that I’d never have the nerve to do, and tears into flinders anything she doesn’t think is right.  Why, when we were little girls and went to the public schools together, two of our little playmates, who turned out to have a little negro blood, we ...”  Sylvia stopped, suddenly warned by some instinct that Aunt Victoria would not be a sympathetic listener to that unforgotten episode of her childhood, that episode which had seemed to have no consequences, no sequel, but which ever since that day had insensibly affected the course of her growth, like a great rock fallen into the Current of her life.

Mrs. Marshall-Smith, deliberating with bated breath between broadcloth and blue panama, did not notice the pause.  She did, however, add a final comment on the matter, some moments later, when she observed, “How any girl in her senses can go on studying, when she’s engaged to a man who needs her as much as Arnold needs Judith!” To which Sylvia answered irrelevantly with a thought which had just struck her thrillingly, “But how perfectly fine of Arnold to tell her himself!”

“She must have hypnotized him,” said Mrs. Marshall-Smith with conviction, “but then I don’t pretend to understand the ways of young people nowadays.”  She was now forty-five, in the full bloom of a rarely preserved beauty, and could afford to make remarks about the younger generation.  “At any rate,” she went on, “it is a comfort to know that Judith has set her hand to the wheel.  I have not in years crossed the ocean with so much peace of mind about Arnold as I shall have this time,” said his stepmother.  “No, leave that blue voile, Helene, the collar never fitted.”

“Oh, he doesn’t spend the winters in Paris with you?” asked Sylvia.

“He’s been staying here in Lydford of late—­crazy as it sounds.  He was simply so bored that he couldn’t think of anything else to do.  He has, besides, an absurd theory that he enjoys it more in winter than in summer.  He says the natives are to be seen then.  He’s been here from his childhood.  He knows a good many of them, I suppose.  Now, Helene, let’s see the gloves and hats.”