“What do you think?” I asked Evan, as we closed our bedroom door.

“Of what?” he answered, with the occasional obtuseness that will overtake the best of men.

“Of Sylvia and Bradford, of course.  Are they in love, do you think?”

“I rather think that he is,” Evan answered, slowly, as if bringing his mind from afar, “but that he doesn’t know it, and I hope he may stay in ignorance, for it will do him no good, for I am sure that she is not, at least with Bradford.  She is drifting about in the Whirlpool now.  She has not ‘found herself’ in any way, as yet.  She seems a charming girl, but I warn you, Barbara, don’t think you scent romance, and try to put a finger in this pie!  Your knowledge of complex human nature isn’t nearly as big as your heart, and the Latham set are wholly beyond your ken and comprehension.”  Then Evan, declining to argue the matter, went promptly to sleep.

Not so Sylvia.  When Miss Lavinia went to her room to see if the girl was comfortable and have a little go-to-bed chat by the fire, she found her stretched upon the bed; her head hidden between the pillows, in a vain effort to stifle her passionate sobbing.

“What is it, my child?” she asked, truly distressed.  “Are you tired, or have you taken cold, or what?”

“No, nothing like that,” she whispered, keeping her face hidden and jerking out disjointed sentences, “but I can’t do anything for anybody.  No one really depends on me for anything.  Helen Baker must leave college, because they need her at home,—­just think, need her!  Isn’t that happiness?  And Mr. Bradford is so joyful over his new salary, thinks it is a fortune, and with being able to buy those things for his mother,—­father has sent me more money during the four months I’ve been back, so I may feel independent, he says, than the Professor will earn in a year.  Independent? deserted is a better word!  I hardly know my own parents, I find, and they expect nothing from me, even my companionship.

“Before I went away to school, if mamma was ill, I used to carry up her breakfast, and brush her hair; now she treats me almost like a stranger,—­dislikes my going to her room at odd times.  I hardly ever see her, she is always so busy, and if I beg to be with her, as I did once, she says I do not understand her duty to society.

“People should not have children and then send them away to school until they feel like strangers, and their homes drift so far away that they do not know them when they come back,—­and there’s poor Carthy out west all alone, after the plans we made to be together.  It is all so different from what I expected.  Why does not father come home, or mother seem to mind that he stays away?  What is the matter, Aunt Lavinia?  Is mamma hiding something, or is the fault all mine?”