Margaret assented with a charming manner; and the two girls stood looking guardedly into each other’s eyes.  “She is attractive,” thought Margaret, not unkindly, for she was never unkind, “but I can’t understand just what he sees in her.”  And at the same moment Patty was saying to herself, “Oh, she is everything that he admires and nothing that he enjoys.”

Aloud the elder girl said casually, “It is so quaint living down here in the Square, isn’t it?”

“But it is too far away from everything,” replied Stephen hurriedly.  “It must be very different from what it was when you came to balls here, Mother.”

“Very,” answered Mrs. Culpeper stiffly because the cold hard smile was still on her lips.

“It doesn’t seem far away when you are used to it,” remarked Patty in a spiritless tone.  The vague heaviness, like a black cloud covered her heart again.  She was jealous of Margaret, jealous of her sweet, pale face, of her trusting blue eyes, of the delicate distinction that showed in the turn of her head, in her fragile hands, in the lovely liquid sound of her voice.

“Cousin Corinna has promised to bring me to see you,” said Margaret in her kind and gentle way.

“I hope you’ll come,” replied Patty politely; but in her thoughts she added, “I hope you won’t.  I hope I’ll never see you again.”  She couldn’t be natural; she couldn’t be anything but stiff and awkward; and she was aware all the time that Stephen was as embarrassed as she was.  All the things that she must fight against, that she must triumph over, were embodied in that small black figure with the ivory face, so inelastic, so unbending, so secure in its inherited authority.  There was war between her and Stephen’s mother; and she stood alone, with only her undaunted spirit to support her, while on the opposite side were entrenched all the immovable dead ranks of the generations.  “I shall fight it out,” thought the girl bitterly.  “I don’t care what she thinks of me.  I shall fight it out to the end.”

With her hand on Stephen’s arm, Mrs. Culpeper turned slowly away.  “I feel a little tired,” she explained politely to Patty, “so I am sure that you won’t mind yielding to an infirm old woman, and will let my son help me back to the car.”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” replied Patty, with gay indifference.

“I’ll see you very soon,” said Stephen; and it seemed to the girl as she watched him walking toward the Washington monument that he looked as old and as tired as his mother.

Of course he was obliged to go.  There wasn’t anything else that he could do, and yet—­and yet—­as Patty gazed after the three slowly moving figures, she felt that a cold hand had reached out of the sunshine and clutched her heart.

CHAPTER XVI

THE FEAR OF LIFE

Stephen had intended to go back as soon as he had put his mother into the car; but she clung so tightly to his arm, and there was something so appealing in her fragile dependence, that, almost without realizing it, he found that he was sitting in front of her, and that she was taking him down to his office.