might have seemed its natural
result.

The visit which Aunt Victoria paid them when Sylvia was ten years old
was more peaceable than the one before it. Perhaps the interval of
five years between the two had mellowed the relationship; or more
probably the friction was diminished because Aunt Victoria arranged
matters so that she was less constantly in the house than usual. On
that occasion, in addition to the maid who always accompanied her,
she brought her little stepson and his tutor, and with characteristic
thoughtfulness refused to impose this considerable train of attendants
on a household so primitively organized as that of the Marshalls. They
all spent the fortnight of their stay at the main hotel of the town, a
large new edifice, the conspicuous costliness of which was one of the
most recent sources of civic pride in La Chance. Here in a suite of
four much-decorated rooms, which seemed unutterably elegant to Sylvia,
the travelers slept, and ate most of their meals, making their trips
out to the Marshall house in a small, neat, open carriage, which,
although engaged at a livery-stable by Mrs. Marshall-Smith for the
period of her stay, was not to be distinguished from a privately owned
equipage.

It can be imagined what an event in the pre-eminently stationary life
of the Marshall children was this fortnight. To Judith and Lawrence,
eight and four respectively, Aunt Victoria's charms and amenities were
non-existent. She was for Judith as negligible as all other grown-ups,
save the few who had good sense enough to play games and go in
swimming. Judith's interest centered in the new boy, whom the
Marshalls now saw for the first time, and who was in every way a
specimen novel in their limited experience of children. During their
first encounter, the well-groomed, white-linen-clad boy with his
preternaturally clean face, his light-brown hair brushed till it shone
like lacquer, his polished nails and his adult appendage of a tutor,
aroused a contempt in Judith's mind which was only equaled by her
astonishment. On that occasion he sat upright in a chair between his
stepmother and his tutor, looking intently out of very bright blue
eyes at the two gipsy-brown little girls in their single-garment
linen play-clothes, swinging their tanned bare legs and feet from the
railing of the porch. They returned this inspection in silence--on
Sylvia's part with the keen and welcoming interest she always felt in
new people who were