Sylvia had not thought of this.  She was the least guileful of beings, this Sylvia, and she saw nothing amiss in these inquiries.

“I suppose they may have done so; and Mrs. Owen talked to me about going to college when I visited her.”

“Oh!  If she undertook to persuade you, then it is no wonder you decided to go.  She’s a very powerful pleader, as she would put it herself.”

“It wasn’t just that way, Mrs. Bassett.  I think grandfather had already persuaded me.  Mrs. Owen didn’t know of it till afterward; but she seemed to like the idea.  Her ideas about girls and women are very interesting.”

“Yes?  She has a very decided way of expressing herself.  I should imagine, though, that with her training and manner of life she might look a little warily at the idea of college training for women.  Personally, you understand, I am heartily in favor of it.  I have hoped that Marian might go to college.  Aunt Sally takes the greatest interest in Marian, naturally, but she has never urged it upon us.”

Sylvia gazed off across the lake and made no reply.  She recalled distinctly Mrs. Owen’s comments on Marian, expressed quite clearly on the day of their drive into the country, a year before.  It was not for her to repeat those observations; she liked Marian and admired her, and she saw no reason why Marian should not go to college.  Sylvia, guessing nothing of what was in Mrs. Bassett’s mind, failed to understand that Mrs. Owen’s approval of Marian’s education was of importance.  Nothing could have been more remote from her thoughts than the idea that her own plans concerned any one but herself and her grandfather.  She was not so dull, however, but that she began to feel that Mrs. Bassett was speaking defensively of Marian.

“Marian’s taste in reading is very unusual, I think.  I have always insisted that she read only the best.  She is very fond of Tennyson.  I fancy that after all, home training is really the most valuable,—­I mean that the atmosphere of the home can give a child what no school supplies.  I don’t mean, of course, that we have it in our home; but I’m speaking of the ideal condition where there is an atmosphere.  I’ve made a point of keeping good books lying about the house, and the best magazines and reviews.  I was never happier than the day I found Marian curled up on a lounge reading Keats.  It may be that the real literary instinct, such as I feel Marian has, would only be spoiled by college; and I should like nothing better than to have Marian become a writer.  A good many of our best American women writers have not been college women; I was looking that up only the other day.”

Sylvia listened, deeply interested; then she laughed suddenly, and as Mrs. Bassett turned toward her she felt that it would do no harm to repeat a remark of Mrs. Owen’s that had struck her as being funny.

“I just happened to remember something Mrs. Owen said about colleges.  She said that if it isn’t in the colt the trainer can’t put it there; and I suppose the successful literary women have had genius whether they had higher education or not.  George Eliot hadn’t a college training, but of course she was a very great woman.”