Mrs. Latham slept late the next morning, and at eleven o’clock had only finished looking over her mail without yet touching her breakfast, when, without waiting for an answer to her knock, Sylvia entered.  Her mother looked up in some surprise, for she did not encourage running in and out at all hours, or any of the usual intimacies between a mother and grown daughter who are companions.  In fact she did not even ask Sylvia to sit down, or if she was ill, though her pallor was very apparent, but merely raised questioning eyebrows, saying, “What is it?” as she turned her attention to some legal-looking documents in her lace-decked lap.

Chilled to the heart Sylvia seated herself in a low chair by her mother, so that she need not raise her voice, and twisting her hands nervously, told what had happened in as few words as possible, much as if she had repeated them over and over until they were learned like a lesson.

Mrs. Latham’s cold gray eyes at first snapped viciously, and then grew big with wonder as Sylvia ended by saying, “I should never have spoken of this to any one, and tried to forget, but you would think it strange that Mr. Bell should stop coming here—­and—­”

“Think it strange?” said Mrs. Latham, speaking harshly and rapidly, a thing she rarely did.  “Do you know what I think of you?  That you are the most absolute little fool I ever imagined.  You not only refuse a man who could make your social position secure, but rant and get into tantrums over the compliment he pays you, and call it an ‘insult,’ exactly as your canting grandmother Latham might have done.  I’ve no patience with you; and if you think that this nonsense of yours shuts the door in Monty Bell’s face, you are wholly mistaken.

“While we are upon this subject of divorce that seems to shock you so, I may as well tell you what you will not see for yourself, and your father appears to have been too mealy-mouthed to explain,—­we have agreed to separate.  No need of your getting tragic, there are no public recriminations on either side, no vulgar infidelity or common quarrelling, everything quite amicable, I assure you.  Simply we find our tastes totally different, and have done so for several years.  Mr. Latham’s ambitions are wholly financial, mine are social.  He repelled and ignored my best friends, and as we are in every way independent of each other, he has been wise enough to avoid possible and annoying complications by standing out of my way and making it easy for me to legalize the arrangement and readjust myself completely to new conditions.”

“But what of Carthy and me?” gasped Sylvia, in a voice so choked and hollow that the older woman hesitated, but for a single instant only.  “Have neither you nor father thought of us?  Where do we belong?  Where is our home?  Can people who have once loved each other forget their children and throw them off so?  Does God allow it?  You must have cared for father once, for I remember when I was a little girl you told me that you called me Sylvia, to have my name as nearly like father’s—­Sylvester—­as possible.  Have you forgotten it all, that you can do this thing, when you say in the same breath that father has done no evil?”