nd you
wouldn't wait to hear, and the judge tried to tell you and you wouldn't
listen. People don't often get three chances in this world, Miss
Thorne."

His tone maddened her, in combination with her own failure. "Are you
taking it upon yourself to reprove me, Mr. O'Bannon?" she asked.

"I'm taking it upon myself to tell you how things are," he answered.

"I don't believe it is the way they are," she said.

Angry as she was, she did not mean the phrase to sound as insulting as
it did. She meant that there must be some unsuspected avenue of
approach; but her quick tone and insolent manner made the words
themselves sound like the final insult.

O'Bannon simply turned from her, and holding up his hand to the
shifty-eyed boy said clearly, "I'll see you now, Gray."

There was nothing for Lydia to do but accept her dismissal. She flounced
out of the room, and all the way home in the car shocked Miss Bennett by
her epithets. "Insolent country lout" was the mildest of them.

A few days afterward Miss Thorne moved back to New York to the house in
the East Seventies. Miss Bennett, who hated the country, partly because
there she was more under Lydia's thumb, rejoiced at being back in New
York. She had many friends--was much more personally popular than her
charge--and in town she could see them more easily. Every morning after
she had finished her housekeeping she went out and walked round the
reservoir. She liked to walk, planting her little feet as precisely as
if she were dancing or skating. Then there was usually some necessary
shopping for Lydia or the house or herself; then luncheon, and afterward
for an hour or two her own work. She was a member of endless committees,
entertainments for charitable purposes, hospital boards, reform
associations. Then before five she was at home, behind the tea table,
waiting on Lydia, engaged in getting rid of people whom Lydia didn't
want to see and keeping those whom Lydia would want to see but had
forgotten. And then dinner--at home if Lydia was giving a party; but
most often both women dined out.

The winter was notable for Lydia's sudden friendship or flirtation, or
affair as it was variously described, with Stephen Albee, the
ex-governor of a great state. It would have seemed more natural if he
had been one of Eleanor's discoveries, but he was not--he was Lydia's
own find. Eleanor, with all her airs of a young old maid, had never been
known to distinguish any man lacking in t