Sylvia quivered, cried out explosively, “No!” and turned away, feeling a hot pulse beating through her body.  But Aunt Victoria happened to divert attention at that moment.  She had been reading, with a very serious and somewhat annoyed expression, a long telegram just handed her, and now in answer to Mrs. Marshall’s expression of concern, said hastily, “Oh, it’s Arnold again....  It’s always Arnold!” She moved to a desk and wrote a brief telegram which she handed to the waiting man-servant.  Sylvia noticed it was addressed to Mr. A.H.  Saunders, a name which set dimly ringing in her head recollections now muffled and obscured.

Aunt Victoria went on to Mrs. Marshall:  “Arnold hates this school so.  He always hates his schools.”

“Oh, he is at school now?” asked Mrs. Marshall.  “You haven’t a tutor for him?”

“Oh yes, Mr. Saunders is still with him—­in the summers and during holidays.”  Mrs. Marshall-Smith explained further:  “To keep him up in his studies.  He doesn’t learn anything in his school, you know.  They never do.  It’s only for the atmosphere—­the sports; you know, they play cricket where he is now—­and the desirable class of boys he meets.... All the boys have tutors in vacation times to coach them for the college-entrance examinations.”

The face of the college professor’s wife continued immovably grave during this brief summary of an educational system.  She inquired, “How old is Arnold now?” learned that he was seventeen, remembered that, oh yes, he was a year older than Sylvia, and allowed the subject to drop into one of the abysmal silences for which she alone had the courage.  Her husband’s sister was as little proof against it as her husband.  As it continued, Mrs. Marshall-Smith went through the manoeuvers which in a less perfectly bred person would have been fidgeting....

No one paid any attention to Sylvia, who sat confronting herself in a long mirror and despising every garment she wore.

CHAPTER XI

ARNOLD’S FUTURE IS CASUALLY DECIDED

The next day was to have been given up to really improving pursuits.  The morning in the Art Institute came off as planned.  The girls were marshaled through the sculpture and paintings and various art objects with about the result which might have been expected.  As blankly inexperienced of painting and sculpture as any Bushmen, they received this sudden enormous dose of those arts with an instant, self-preservatory incapacity to swallow even a small amount of them.  It is true that the very first exhibits they saw, the lions outside the building, the first paintings they encountered, made an appreciable impression on them; but after this they followed their elders through the interminable crowded halls of the museum, their legs aching with the effort to keep their balance on the polished floors, their eyes increasingly glazed