“I wish now I'd been different,” Mrs. Condon said, standing in the door. Her dress was not yet on, but her underthings were fully as elaborate and shimmering as any gown could hope to be. “And above everything else, I am sorry for the kind of mother you've had.” This was so unexpected, the other's voice was so unhappy, that Linda was startled. She hurried across the room and laid a slim palm on her mother's full bare arm. “Don't say that,” Linda begged, distressed; “you've been the best in the world.”

“You know nothing about it,” the elder returned, momentarily seated, her hands clasped on her full silken lap. “But perhaps it's not too late. You ought to go to a good school, where you'd learn everything, but principally what a bad thoughtless mama you have.”

“I shouldn't stay a second in a place where they said that,” Linda declared. A new apprehension touched her. “You're not really thinking of sending me away!” she cried. “Why, you simply could not get along. You know you couldn't! The maids never do up your dresses right; and you'd be so lonely in the mornings you would nearly die.”

“That's true,” Mrs. Condon admitted wearily. “I would expire; but I was thinking of you—you're only beginning life; and the start you'll get with me is all wrong. Or, anyway, most people think so.”

“They are only jealous.”

“Will you go into the closet, darling, and pour out a teeny little sip from my flask; mama feels a thousand years old this evening.”

Returning with the silver cup of the flask half full of pale pungent brandy Linda could scarcely keep the tears from spilling over her cheeks. She had never before felt so sad. Her mother hastily drank, the stinging odor was transferred to her lips; and there was a palpable recovery of her customary spirit.

“I don't know what gets over me,” she asserted. “I'm certain, from what I've heard of them, that you wouldn't be a bit better off in one of those fashionable schools for girls. Woman, young and older, were never meant to be a lot together in one place. It's unnatural. They don't like each other, ever, and it's all hypocritical and nasty. You will get more from life, yes, and me. I'm honest, too honest for my own good, if the truth was known.”

She rose and unconsciously strayed to the mirror over the mantel where she examined her countenance in absorbed detail.

“My skin is getting soft like putty,” she remarked aloud to herself. “The thing is, I've had my time and don't want to pay for it. Blondes go quicker than dark women; you ought to last a long while, Linda.” Mrs. Condon had turned, and her tone was again almost complaining, almost ill-natured. Linda considered this information with a troubled face. It was quite clear that it made her mother cross. “I've seen men stop and look at you right now, too, and you nothing more than a slip fourteen years old. Of course, when I was fifteen I had a proposal; but I was very forward; and somehow you're different—so dam' serious.”

She couldn't help it, Linda thought, if she was serious; she really had a great deal to think about, their income among other things. If she didn't watch it, pay the bills every three months when it arrived, her mother would never have a dollar in the gold mesh bag. Then, lately, the dresses the elder threatened to buy were often impossible; Linda learned this from the comments she heard after the wearing of evening affairs sent home against her earnest protests. They were, other women more discreetly gowned had agreed, ridiculous.

Linda calmly realized that in this her judgment was superior to her mother's. In other ways, too, she felt she was really the elder; and her dismay at the possibility of going away to school had been mostly made up of the realization of how much her mother's well-being was dependent on her.

Mrs. Condon, finishing her dressing in the bedroom, at times called out various injunctions, general or immediate. “Tell them to have a taxi at the door for seven sharp. Have you talked to that little girl in the black velvet?” Linda hadn't and made a mental note to avoid her more pointedly in the future. “Get out mother's carriage boots from the hall closet; no, the others—you know I don't wear the black with coral stockings. They come off and the fur sticks to my legs. It will be very gay to-night; I hope to heaven Ross doesn't take too much again.” Linda well remembered that the last time Ross had taken too much her mother's Directoire wrap had been completely torn in half. “There, it is all nonsense about my fading; I look as well as I ever did.”

Mrs. Condon stood before her daughter like a large flame-pink tulle flower. Her bright gold hair was constrained by black gauze knotted behind, her bare shoulders were like powdered rosy marble and the floating skirts gathered in a hand showed marvelously small satin-tied carriage boots. Indeed Linda's exclamation of delight was entirely frank. She had never seen her mother more radiant. The cunningly applied rouge, the enhanced brilliancy of her long-lashed eyes, had perfectly the illusion of unspent beauty.

“Do stay down-stairs after dinner and play,” the elder begged. “And if you want to go to the theatre, ask Mr. Bendix, at the desk, to send you with that chauffeur we have had so much. I positively forbid your leaving the hotel else. It's a comfort after all, that you are serious. Kiss mama—”

However, she descended with her mother in the elevator; there was a more public caress; and the captain in the Chinese dining-room placed Linda at a small table against the wall. There she had clams—she adored iced clams—creamed shrimps and oysters with potatoes bordure, alligator-pear salad and a beautiful charlotte cream with black walnuts. After this she sedately instructed the captain what to sign on the back of the dinner check—Linda Condon, room five hundred and seven—placed thirty-five cents beside the finger-bowl for the waiter, and made her way out to the news stand and the talkative girl who had it in charge. Exhausting the possibilities of gossip, and deciding not to go out to the theatre—in spite of the news girl's exciting description of a play called “The New Sin”—she was walking irresolutely through the high gilded and marble assemblage space when, unfortunately, she was captured by Mr. Moses Feldt.

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