are." Amy, at this appeal to her sophistication, gravely nodded. "I do
feel sorry for Ruth," Cora added in a more personal tone.

"Will you go to see her?" Amy asked, rather pointedly.

"Oh, I couldn't do that," replied Cora. "My family--you know,--or
perhaps you don't know. I'm related to Mrs. Williams," she laughed.

"Oh!" Amy ejaculated, aghast, and newly fascinated by the horror, what
somehow seemed the impossibleness of the whole thing--that she should be
talking of Ruth Holland to a woman related to Mrs. Williams!

"I suppose _she_ felt terribly," Amy murmured.

Cora laughed a little. "Oh, I don't know. It never seemed to me that
Marion would do much feeling. Feeling is so--ruffling."

"She looks," said Amy, a little aggressively, "as though she might not
show all she feels."

"Oh, I suppose not," Cora agreed pleasantly. "Perhaps I do Marion an
injustice. She may have suffered in silence. Certainly she's kept
silence. Truth is, I never liked her so very well. I like Ruth much the
better of the two. I like warmth--feeling."

She was leaning forward and looking from the window. "That's the
Hollands'," she said. And under her breath, compassionately, she
murmured, "Poor Ruth!"

"I should think you _would_ go and see her," said Amy, curiously
resentful of this feeling.

With a little sigh Cora leaned back in the luxurious corner. "We're not
free to do what we might like to do in this life," she said, looking
gravely at Amy and speaking as one actuated by something larger than
personal feeling. "Too many people are associated with me for me to go
and see Ruth--as, for my own part, I'd gladly do. You see it's even
closer than being related to Marion. Cyrus Holland,--Ruth's
brother--married into my family too. Funny, isn't it?" she laughed at
Amy's stare. "Yes, Cyrus Holland married a second cousin of Stuart
Williams' wife."

"Why--" gasped Amy, "it's positively weird, isn't it?"

"Things are pretty much mixed up in this world," Cora went on, speaking
with that good-natured sophistication which appealed to Amy as worldly.
"I think one reason Cy was so bitter against Ruth, and kept the whole
family so, was the way it broke into his own plans. He was in love with
Louise at the time Ruth left; of course all her kith and kin--being also
Marion's--were determined she should not marry a Holland. Cy thought he
had lost her, but after a time, as long as no one was quite so bitter
against Ruth as he, the oppositio