With her mother away on a wedding-trip with Mr. Moses Feldt, Linda was suddenly projected into the companionship of his two daughters. One, as he had said, was light, but a different fairness from Mrs. Condon's--richly thick, like honey; while Judith, the elder, who must have been twenty, was dark in skin, in everything but her eyes, which were a contrasting ashen-violet. She spoke at once of Linda's flawless whiteness: “A magnolia,” she said, in a deliberate dark voice; “you are quite a gorgeous child. Do you mind my saying that your clothes are rather quaint? They aren't inevitable, and yours ought to be that.” They were at lunch in the Feldt dining-room, an interior of heavy ornately carved black wood, panels of Chinese embroidery in imperial yellow, and a neutral mauve carpet. The effect, with glittering iridescent pyramids of glass, massive frosted repoussé silver, burnished gold-plate and a wide table decoration of orchids and fern, was tropical and intense. It was evident to Linda that the Feldts were very rich indeed. The entire apartment resembled the dining-room, while the building itself filled a whole city block, with a garden and fountains like an elaborate public square. Linda, however, wasn't particularly impressed by such show; she saw that Judith and Pansy had expected that of her; but she was determined not to exhibit a surprise that would imply any changes in her mother's and her condition. In addition, Linda calmly took such surroundings for granted. Her primary conception of possible existence was elegance; its necessity had so entered into her being that it had departed from her consciousness. “I must take you to Lorice,” Judith continued; “she will know better than any one else what you ought to have. You seem terribly pure--at first. But you're not a snowdrop; oh, no--something very rare in a conservatory. Much better style than your mother.” “I hope you won't mind Judith,” Pansy put in; “she's always like that.” A silence followed in which they industriously dipped the leaves of mammoth artichokes into a buttery sauce. Linda, as customary, said very little, she listened with patient care to the others and endeavored to arrive at conclusions. She liked Pansy, who was as warm and simple as her father. Judith was harder to understand. She was absorbed in color and music, and declared that ugliness gave her a headache at once. Altogether, Linda decided, she was rather silly, especially about men; and at times her emotions would rise beyond control until she wept in a thin hysterical gasping.