ut it to herself, that threatened to sweep over the banks of
righteousness and decorum, and inundate, disastrously, the peaceful
fields.

She couldn't expect to have the strength to resist this drift herself,
but she had a vision of her daughter rising splendidly to the task. And
for that task she trained her--or thought she did; saw to it that the
girl understood the Eighteenth Century Liberalism, which, limited to the
fields of politics and education, and extended to include women equally
with men, was the gospel of the movement she had grown up in. With it
for a background, with a university education and a legal training, the
girl would have everything she needed.

She expected her to marry, of course. But in her day-dreams, it was to
be one of Rose's converts to the cause--won perhaps by her advocacy at
the bar, of some legal case involving the rights of woman--who was to
lay his new-born conviction, along with his personal adoration, at the
girl's feet.

Certainly Rodney Aldrich, who, as Rose outrageously had boasted, rolled
her in the dust and tramped all over her in the course of their
arguments, presented a violent contrast to the ideal husband she had
selected. Indeed, it should be hard to think of him as anything but the
rock on which her whole ambition for the girl would be shattered.

It was strange she hadn't thought of that during her talk with Rose!

Now that the idea had occurred to her she tried hard to look at the
event that way and to nurse into energetic life a tragic regret over the
miscarriage of a lifetime's hope. It was all so obviously what she
ought to feel. Yet the moment she relaxed the effort, her mind flew back
to a vibration between a hope and a fear: the hope, that the man Rose
was about to marry would shelter and protect her always, as tenderly as
she herself had sheltered her; the terror--and this was stronger--that
he might not.

That night, during the process of getting ready for bed, Rose put on a
bath-robe, picked up her hair brush and went into Portia's room. Portia,
much quicker always about such matters, was already on the point of
turning out the light, but guessing what her sister wanted, she stacked
her pillows, lighted a cigarette, climbed into bed and settled back
comfortably for a chat.

"I hope," Rose began, "that you're really pleased about it. Because
mother isn't. She's terribly unhappy. Do you suppose it's because she
thinks I've--well, sort of deserted her, i