“Don’t be tragic, Sylvia, and rake up things that have nothing to do with the matter.  As to your brother, it was your father’s foolish severity about a card debt, and insisting upon placing him away from me, that is primarily responsible for the divorce, not any wish of mine to exile Carthy.  And you ask where your home is, as if I had turned you out, when you have just refused an offer that any unmarried society woman, who can afford it, would clutch.”

Sylvia sat silent, looking blindly before her.  Her mother waited a moment, as if expecting some reply, and then continued:  “Now that the matter is virtually settled, I suppose in a few days the papers will save me the trouble of announcing it.  Under the circumstances, I shall rent the Newport house for the season, as I have had several good offers, and go abroad for two or three months on the continent, so that before my return the town house will be redecorated and everything will be readjusted for a successful winter.  You had better take a few days before deciding what to do.  You can, of course, come with me, if you are not sick of travel, or go to your father, who is ready to make you a handsome allowance; though you will find that awkward at present, as he is moving about so much.  If you choose to feel aggrieved just now, you might persuade your dear, prim Miss Dorman to either stay here with you or take that little furnished house that is to rent on the lower road, if you prefer that form of discomfort they call simplicity.  You needn’t decide now; take time,” she added genially, as if she was doing all that could be asked.

When she ceased speaking, Sylvia, with bowed head, rose and quickly left the room.

Then Mrs. Latham gave a sigh of relief that the interview was over, threw the papers into a bureau drawer, called to the maid, who had been all the while listening in the dressing room, to prepare to arrange her hair, and, taking the chances that Sylvia would keep her room, at least for some hours, wrote a hasty note to Monty Bell, inviting him to luncheon.

Meanwhile, Sylvia, instead of going to her room to cry, took her hat and crept out into the lane that led to the woods.  She must be quite away by herself and gain time to think.  This was a terrible sort of grief that could neither be kept secret nor halved by sympathy, but must be worn in the full glare of day.  Her heart condemned her mother wholly, and she understood why her father kept the silence of shame,—­to whom could she turn?  As she gained the woods, and throwing herself down on a soft bed of hemlock needles, closed her dry, burning eyes, two people seemed to stand side by side and look at her pityingly,—­Lavinia Dorman and Horace Bradford,—­and mentally she turned toward one and shrank from the other.  In Miss Lavinia she saw her only refuge, but between herself and Horace the shadow of his upright mother seemed to intervene.  What could they think of her mother playing at Geisha girl in her own home at the very hour of its wreck?