“I must not forget to tell you that Judge Morris now spends his Sunday evenings with Professor Hardage.  No one has told him:  they have spared him.  Of course every one knows that he was once engaged to Rowan’s mother and that scandal broke the engagement and separated them for life.  Only in his case it was long afterward found out that the tales were not true.

“I have forgotten Barbee.  He and Marguerite had quarrelled before her illness—­no one knows why, unless she was already under the influence of her fatal infatuation for Rowan.  Barbee has gone to work.  A few weeks ago he won his first serious case in court and attracted attention.  They say his speech was so full of dignity and unnecessary rage that some one declared he was simply trying to recover his self-esteem for Marguerite’s having called him trivial and not yet altogether grown up.

“Of course you must have had letters of your own, telling you of the arrival of the Fieldings—­Victor’s mother and sisters; and the house is continually gay with suppers and parties.

“How my letter wanders!  It is a sick letter, Isabel, a dead letter.  I must not close without going back to the Merediths once more.  People have been driving out to see the little farm and the curious little house of Dent Meredith’s bride elect—­a girl called Pansy Something.  It lies near enough to the turnpike to be in full view—­too full view.  They say it is like a poultry farm and that the bride is a kind of American goose girl:  it will be a marriage between geology and the geese.  The geese will have the best of it.

“Dearest friend, what shall I tell you of my own life—­of my nights, of the mornings when I wake, of these long, lonesome, summer afternoons?  Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing!  I should rather write to you how, my thoughts go back to the years of our girlhood together when we were so happy, Isabel, so happy, so happy!  What ideals we formed as to our marriages and our futures!

“KATE.

“P.S.—­I meant to tell you that of course I shall do everything in my power to break up the old friendship between George and Rowan.  Indeed, I have already done it.”

VI

This letter brought Isabel home at once through three days of continuous travel.  From the station she had herself driven straight to Mrs. Osborn’s house, and she held the letter in her hand as she went.

Her visit lasted for some time and it was not pleasant.  When Mrs. Osborn hastened down, surprised at Isabel’s return and prepared to greet her with the old warmth, her greeting was repelled and she herself recoiled, hurt and disposed to demand an explanation.

“Isabel,” she said reproachfully, “is this the way you come back to me?”

Isabel did not heed but spoke:  “As soon as I received this letter, I determined to come home.  I wished to know at once what these things are that are being said about Rowan.  What are they?”