Leila had come and gone, and they had had their talk. It had not lasted as long as Mrs. Lidcote wished, for in the middle of it Leila had been summoned to the telephone to receive an important message from town, and had sent word to her mother that she couldn’t come back just then, as one of the young ladies had been called away unexpectedly and arrangements had to be made for her departure. But the mother and daughter had had almost an hour together, and Mrs. Lidcote was happy. She had never seen Leila so tender, so solicitous. The only thing that troubled her was the very excess of this solicitude, the exaggerated expression of her daughter’s annoyance that their first moments together should have been marred by the presence of strangers. “Not strangers to me, darling, since they’re friends of yours,” her mother had assured her. “Yes; but I know your feeling, you queer wild mother. I know how you’ve always hated people.” (_Hated people!_ Had Leila forgotten why?) “And that’s why I told Susy that if you preferred to go with her to Ridgefield on Sunday I should perfectly understand, and patiently wait for our good hug. But you didn’t really mind them at luncheon, did you, dearest?” Mrs. Lidcote, at that, had suddenly thrown a startled look at her daughter. “I don’t mind things of that kind any longer,” she had simply answered. “But that doesn’t console me for having exposed you to the bother of it, for having let you come here when I ought to have _ordered_ you off to Ridgefield with Susy. If Susy hadn’t been stupid she’d have made you go there with her. I hate to think of you up here all alone.” Again Mrs. Lidcote tried to read something more than a rather obtuse devotion in her daughter’s radiant gaze. “I’m glad to have had a rest this afternoon, dear; and later--” “Oh, yes, later, when all this fuss is over, we’ll more than make up for it, sha’n’t we, you precious darling?” And at this point Leila had been summoned to the telephone, leaving Mrs. Lidcote to her conjectures. These were still floating before her in cloudy uncertainty when Miss Suffern tapped at the door. “You’ve come to take me down to tea? I’d forgotten how late it was,” Mrs. Lidcote exclaimed. Miss Suffern, a plump peering little woman, with prim hair and a conciliatory smile, nervously adjusted the pendent bugles of her elaborate black dress. Miss Suffern was always in mourning, and always commemorating the demise of distant relatives by wearing the discarded wardrobe of their next of kin. “It isn’t _exactly_ mourning,” she would say; “but it’s the only stitch of black poor Julia had--and of course George was only my mother’s step-cousin.” As she came forward Mrs. Lidcote found herself humorously wondering whether she were mourning Horace Pursh’s divorce in one of his mother’s old black satins.