He admitted, with acrimony, the justice of this thrust.  “Very likely.  Very likely!—­everything base and mean in me, that you keep down, springs to life in me at her touch.  I dare say I do envy her—­I’m quite capable of that—­am I not her brother, with the same—­”

Mrs. Marshall said hastily:  “Hush!  Hush!  Here’s Judith.  For Heaven’s sake don’t let the child hear you!”

For the first time the idea penetrated Sylvia’s head that she ought not to have listened.  Buddy was now soundly asleep:  she detached her hand from his, and went soberly along the hall into her own room.  She did not want to see her father just then.

A long time after, Mother called up to say that Aunt Victoria had come for her afternoon drive, and to leave Arnold.  Sylvia opened the door a crack and asked, “Where’s Father?”

“Oh, gone back to the University this long time,” answered her mother in her usual tone.  Sylvia came down the stairs slowly and took her seat in the carriage beside Aunt Victoria with none of her usual demonstrative show of pleasure.

“Don’t you like my dress?” asked Aunt Victoria, as they drove away.  “You don’t even notice it, and I put it on ’specially to please you—­you’re the one discriminating critic in this town!” As Sylvia made no answer to this sally, she went on:  “It’s hard to get into alone, too.  I had to ask the hotel chambermaid to hook it up on the shoulders.”

Thus reminded of Pauline, Sylvia could have but inattentive eyes for the creation of amber silk and lace, and brown fur, which seductively clad the handsome body beside her.

Mrs. Marshall-Smith gave her favorite a penetrating look.  “What’s the matter with you, Sylvia?” she asked in the peremptory note which her sweet voice of many modulations could startlingly assume on occasion.  Sylvia had none of Judith’s instant pugnacious antagonism to any peremptory note.  She answered in one imploring rush of a question, “Aunt Victoria, why should Father be so very mad at Pauline?”

Mrs. Marshall-Smith looked a little startled at this direct reference to the veiled storm-center of the day, but not at all displeased.  “Oh, your mother told him?  Was he so very angry?” she asked with a slight smile.

“Oh, dreadfully!” returned Sylvia.  “I didn’t mean to listen, but I couldn’t help it.  Buddy wouldn’t go to sleep and Father’s voice was so loud—­and he got madder and madder at her.”  She went on with another question, “Auntie, who was Ephraim Smith?”

Aunt Victoria turned upon her in astonishment, and did not, for a moment, answer; then:  “Why, that was the name of my husband, Sylvia.  What has that to do with anything?”

“Why didn’t Pauline like him?” asked Sylvia.

Mrs. Marshall-Smith replied with a vivacity of surprise which carried her out of her usual delicate leisure in speech. “Pauline? Why, she never saw him in her life! What are you talking about, child?”