Mamma, who so rarely betrayed herself by an open admission of her real state of mind, sat by the window crying softly. Auntie, at her window, moved heavily as through the act to expend some of her ponderous energy.

"I've always felt there must be something wrong with our way of managing, Lavinia? Do you suppose it would have worked better if we'd ever had a plan to fit our expenses to, or made Robert agree as to just what we might have to go on?"

"If you think you could have done it better than I have, Ann Eliza—" from Mamma, a bright spot on either cheek as she raised her head and faced her sister-in-law. Little lady, only forty-two now, and meant by heaven to be pretty if instead she had not to be so anxiously perturbed!

"How bad is it, Lavinia?" from Auntie.

A light footstep sounded along the hall and Selina paused in her mother's doorway. It was September and, after the long summer, pleasures and activities were starting up. She had been to the theater with Tuttle last night, and this morning was allowed to have her sleep out. Here at half-past nine she was just coming up from her breakfast!

This Selina standing there in the doorway, looking from her mother to her aunt, was nineteen now and past, but beneath something of gravity now in the face under the very lovely hair, she still was sweet and loving and anxious.

"How bad is it, Lavinia?" Auntie was saying.

Mamma looking across to the door saw her child. "Come in, Selina. You've heard as much, and you may as well hear the rest. There's no money for Viney. Last month's bills all lapsed over because Robert told me I'd have to wait. And now they've come in with this month's bills. The iceman's been here three times."

Here Mamma's hands dropped into her lap with a gesture that carried dismay to the others. It was the gesture of one who abjures any further responsibility, of one who steps aside. No defence was left in her, no air of anxious justification. She would state the whole, her manner seemed to say, without reserve and without mincing, and let somebody else face the issue.

The face of this older Selina, standing there in the doorway, had gathered something of decision, too, and something of the inner steady flame that comes with this gain in character.

"How has Papa explained it, Mamma? What did he say when he told you that you would have to wait?"

"He didn't explain and I didn't like to ask. It's been clear he was worried all along through the summer."

"Mamma, I think you should have asked. Or I think Papa should have told you, so you wouldn't have to ask."

Mamma made no defence, showed no disposition to reprove, or yet to resent. She searched around for her pocket-handkerchief again, found it, and resumed her crying.

"You said something about it to Robert at the breakfast table this morning, Lavinia?" reminded Auntie.

Mamma conceded this from behind the handkerchief at her eyes.

"You said, 'Robert, you didn't get in from the office till one o'clock last night, and you didn't come up to bed till past three? What is the matter? And this thing of no money again for the bills? What does it all mean?'"

Mamma lifted her head again. Her spirit had returned. "And he said," she spoke indignantly, "'For God's sake, Lavinia, when I'm trying to spare you as long as I can, don't come at me now with questions.' I didn't ask him to spare me!" with spirit. "I'm tired of pretending his way of keeping me in the dark's right. I've been pretending so when I didn't feel so for twenty years. I'm going to say it out now. And I didn't ask him to spare me. I asked him to tell me."

"Mamma, little Mamma!" from Selina, hurrying across the room to her side.

"Of course I wasn't competent at first, and proved I couldn't be trusted with money and the rest of it. I never had been trusted with anything. My mother bought my clothes and my father took the bills from her and paid them. But it doesn't go to prove I couldn't have been made trustworthy if Robert had been patient and showed me a little and trusted me till I could."

"Lavinia," from Auntie piteously, "I've misjudged you. You wouldn't criticize Robert and you wouldn't allow anyone else to criticize him before you?"

Mamma had resumed her soft crying and Selina was on her knees by her, trying to comfort her.

"Have you any idea what is the matter, Mamma? The matter with Papa's affairs, I mean?"

"He's been worried all summer, and you've seen for yourself how haggard he's come to be. There was some talk of his losing his two best agencies last spring. The rest of the business doesn't amount to much, and I'm afraid it must be that he's lost them."

"Mamma, don't you think we've a right to know? I'll go down to him at his office now, if you're willing I may, and ask him? I'll dress and go down to him, if you'll let me?"

"I'm through," said her mother, "I feel that I've failed. The heart's gone out of me. Do what you please."

Matters this time were past the point where Selina felt at all that she wanted to cry. She went quietly back to her room and set about putting things in order with rather more faithfulness than usual, the while thinking and planning her morning so that she might go to her father as she said.

It was past ten o'clock. By the time she dressed and started it would be near or quite eleven. At one o'clock, Tuttle Jones, his mother, Mrs. Sampson, his sister, and a bevy of young people were coming by for her in a tally-ho driven by Tuttle. Their destination was the jockey-club, where they would have lunch before the races, the fall trots opening to-day.

Selina had never been to a clubhouse, and for knowledge of races had seen a derby once in company with her father and Culpepper. But she would have given all chances to come of ever seeing the one or the other, if she'd known how to get out of going to-day. Her soul was sick and also her spirit. Papa, haggard and broken! And Mamma turned on him with reproach, after giving up the fight!

And yet this coaching-party was result of the discovery by Tuttle that she, Selina, never had been to so routine a thing as the race-course clubhouse, or to so perfunctory a piece of business as the trotting races. His manner concerning these sins of omission in her bringing-up was perfect, but he filled up the blanks in her all too meager experience as rapidly as possible after discovery.

Mrs. Gwinne Tuttle had given her nephew's point of view on the social obligation to Selina one day when she had her out driving.

"Tuttle will endeavor to meet his God with a perfect manner and calmly. He'd feel he'd failed 'em both to show gaucherie or surprise. And Tuttle's devout."

About eleven o'clock Selina showed herself at her mother's door again. She had on a summer silk in biscuit tones, one of Mamma's several extravagances for her that had worried her this summer and her leghorn hat with its wreath. And she was carrying Mamma's further extravagance for her, a silk dust-coat. Tuttle had a smart trap and a fast roadster, and throughout the summer had come around about an hour before sundown to take her for a spin out the avenue, or through town and out the country road following the banks of the river. Mamma said this made a coat for her imperative.

Also, as she stood here in the door, she held in her hand a parasol, biscuit-colored too, with a rose lining. Mamma had noticed that everybody in traps or stanhopes, every lady that is, starting forth with the sun still an hour high, had a parasol. As Selina got these things together to-day, she could only hope they were paid for.

"Mamma, I'm starting down to see Papa now. I dressed so as to be ready for the races when they come by for me. It's off my mind and easier for me than to have to hurry when I get back. Mamma, I won't kiss you, nor you either, Auntie. It won't do for me to break down and cry."

She went downstairs and out into the September midday glare. She would walk the two squares to the street-car line and there for the sake of time take a car. Otherwise even carfare might be an extravagance now.

And then as she went along the hot street, Selina with a rush of despair and bitterness began to take stock.

As an economic factor—she was indebted to Miss Emma McRanney for the phrase—where was she, Selina Wistar, after two years of effort?

"Exactly where I started," she told herself still more bitterly, "listening to Mamma say there's no money to pay Aunt Viney."

True, in June just past, she had taken the examinations over again, and this time obtained her teacher's certificate. And to what end? To learn that in lieu of any normal training for teachers in the public schools, she must supply as an assistant without pay for a year to achieve such training.

She had answered some advertisements in Mamma's church paper, for private teaching in Southern families. The result had been to learn that French, drawing, music, and in one instance, needlework, were part of the requirements, for which board and one hundred dollars for the ten months was the largest of the offered remunerations. And this last week she had applied for a chance vacancy in a private school here at home. The polite refusal of her application lay at home now on her table. One line of the reply from the lady principal of the school stayed with her, "Experience in my estimation is the most essential qualification for teaching." It was the thing, Selina told herself, she was begging to be allowed to get!

Here she reached the car-line and at the approach of the jogging car and its little mules got aboard, and, finding herself alone, resumed her communings. More, she got out a small bundle of letters from the pocket of her silk coat, letters she had taken over two nights ago to read to Maud who was just home from six weeks' travel with some cousins.

It had been a long summer for Selina, unbroken except for Tuttle Jones, and since August, by the return of Culpepper. Amanthus had written to her once from Bar Harbor, she had the letter here now, apparently to say Mr. Cyril Doe was there visiting the embassy which had removed itself to that place for the summer. For having said this, Amanthus said nothing else. It was plain that Mr. Doe continued to impress her, and few things in this life so far had. She and her mother since then had left for London. Mr. Tate had written very happily to Culpepper, saying he and Amanthus would be married on his arrival in London.

And Maud had been doing her first real traveling. As said, she was just home and, according to her mother, her first sight of the snow-topped mountains, plains and a few of the cities of her continent had not subdued her discontent.

She had come across to see Selina only yesterday and to talk about her dissatisfaction. "What does Culpepper hear from Mr. Welling, Selina? Has he decided to settle in his part of the state and practice law under his father? I haven't heard from him. I didn't expect to. I told him I didn't believe I cared to correspond. And I didn't care to. If ever he and I take up our friendship again, his glee is going to be with me, and not at me. Selina, what is it I want? Is it the moon, do you suppose? Or only a path under the moon that goes to somewhere?"

Selina here in the jogging street-car, remembering Maud's question, almost cried for her, its appeal was so great!

Then the old Maud, in all the old vigor and energy, had spoken up again. "I'm going to New York and spend the winter as one of those chaperoned parlor-boarders at some school, if Papa will let me. I'll take up something, if it's only horseback riding," bitterly. "There's a fad for riding-schools right now. I really think maybe I'll look into elocution. Though some way that doesn't sound distinguÉ, does it? Perhaps it had better be designing for carpets or wall-paper, I read about women doing these."

So Maud, splendid, loyal, honest, restless Maud!

Selina looked out the car-window and got her bearings. She had time in plenty yet and could resume her communings. Adele had been away since July at Cape May and to the mountains with her mother and grandmother. She would be home about the first of October. Her several letters to Selina had been listless and devoid of much hope.

"I don't quite see what I'm coming back to," she said in the last one here on Selina's lap "and can only hope Mamma and Grandmamma do see. DÉbutantes of the first and second rank when they lapse over to a second winter, I've noticed, form into euchre clubs that play in the daytime with each other, and take classes in the Saturday morning sewing-schools. What becomes of lapsed-over dÉbutantes of the third or even as bad as the fourth rank, apparently I'm being taken back home to find out. I didn't tell you before I left that Mr. Cannon has been engaged all this time to a cousin up at his own home. He told me about it when he came to say good-bye. I thought I'd like you to know, and now we'll drop it."

Selina took up the last of the letters. It was from Juliette and she wrote cheerfully in her crisp, spirited backhand.

Both Granddad and Grandfather came around in their stands, after they found I'd actually done the thing, and agreed to put me through the four years of college. And Algy went to see them it seems and up and told them he purposed doing this himself! That, as he understands it, and unless he was laboring under a mistake, he was the person whose name I'd undertaken to bear. And he's been sending me money right along while I'm here with my cousin making up my two conditions. But it's the money both Granddad and Grandfather have put in the bank for me I'm using and shall use. And so I can't understand all this talk from everybody at home of the shocking great deal I've taken from Algy in marrying him in this way. He and I, at any rate, understood it when we talked it over. My cousin asked me the other day what I meant to do about it when I got through college? Did I look on myself as Algy's wife, or did I not? I hadn't thought about this, and it's been worrying me considerably. Do you suppose he thinks that's the way of it? Do you know, Mamma never once spoke to me about the possibilities of my being anybody's wife in my life?

Selina, glancing up, put her letters hastily together and thrust them in her pocket and rang the bell. She had reached the corner where she left the car, half a block from her father's office.