ame to our heroine.

CHAPTER XIII

GOING TO WASHINGTON

Richard's trunk was ready for Washington. His twelve shirts, which
Eunice had ironed so nicely, were packed away with his collars and new
yarn socks, and his wedding suit, which he was carrying as a mere matter
of form, for he knew he should not need it during his three months'
absence. He should not go into society, he thought, or even attend
levees, with his heart as sore and heavy as it was on this, his last day
at home. Ethelyn was not going with him. She knew it now, and never did
the face of a six-months wife look harder or stonier than hers as she
stayed all day in her room, paying no heed whatever to Richard, and
leaving entirely to Eunice and her mother-in-law those little things
which most wives would have been delighted to do for their husbands'
comfort. Ethelyn was very unhappy, very angry, and very bitterly
disappointed. The fact that she was not going to Washington had fallen
upon her like a thunderbolt, paralyzing her, as it were, so that after
the first great shock was over she seemed like some benumbed creature
bereft of care, or feeling, or interest in anything.

She had remained in Camden the most of the day following Mrs. Judge
Miller's party, and had done a little shopping with Marcia Fenton and
Ella Backus, to whom she spoke of her winter in Washington as a matter
of course, saying what she had to say in Richard's presence, and never
dreaming that he was only waiting for a fitting opportunity to demolish
her castles entirely. Perhaps if Ethelyn had talked Washington openly to
her husband when she was first married, and before his mother had gained
his ear, her chances for a winter at the capital would have been far
greater than they were now. But she had only taken it for granted that
she was going, and supposed that Richard understood it just as she did.
She had asked him several times where he intended to board and why he
did not secure rooms at Willard's, but Richard's non-committal replies
had given her no cue to her impending fate. On the night of her return
from Camden, as she stood by her dressing bureau, folding away her
point-lace handkerchief, she had casually remarked, "I shall not use
that again till I use it in Washington. Will it be very gay there
this winter?"

Richard was leaning his elbow upon the mantel, looking thoughtfully into
the fire, and for a moment he did not answer. He hated to demolish
Ethie's castles, but