She knew that Frederic was infatuated. She did not try to hide the truth from herself. The boy she loved was slipping away from her, and only chance could set his feet back in the old path from which he blindly strayed. Her woman's heart told her that it was not love he felt for Yvonne. The strange mentor that guides her sex out of the ignorance of youth into an understanding of hitherto unpresented questions revealed to her the nature of his feeling for this woman. He would come back to her in time, she knew, chastened; the same instinct that revealed his frailties to her also defended his sense of honour. The unthinkable could never happen! She judged Yvonne, too, in a spirit of fairness that was amazing, considering the lack of perspective that must have been hers to contend with. Despite a natural feeling of antagonism, present even before she saw the new wife of James Brood, and long before her influence affected Brood's son, Lydia found herself confronted by a curious faith in Yvonne's goodness of heart. It never entered the girl's mind to question the honour of this woman--no more than she would have questioned her own. Vanity, love of admiration, the inherent fear of retrogression, greed for attention--any one of these might have been responsible for her conduct covering the past three months. There was certainly a reckless disregard for consequences on her part so far as others--notably Frederic--were concerned. She could not be blind to his plight, and yet it was her pleasure to drag him out beyond his depth where he might struggle or drown while she, sirenlike, looked on for the moment and then turned calmly to the more serious business of combing her hair. Her mother saw the suffering in the girl's eyes, but saw also the proud spirit that would have resented sympathy from one even so close as she. Down in the heart of that quiet, reserved mother smouldered a hatred for Yvonne Brood that would have stopped at nothing had it been in her power to inflict punishment for the wrong that was being done. She, too, saw tragedy ahead, but her vision was broader than Lydia's. It included the figure of James Brood. Lydia worked steadily, almost doggedly, at the task she had undertaken to complete for the elder Brood. Every afternoon found her seated at the desk in the study opposite the stern-faced man who laboured with her over the seemingly endless story of his life. Something told her that there were secret chapters which she was not to write. She wrote those that were to endure; the others were to die with him.