Dosia had come back from the Leverichs' to a household in which her presence no longer made any difference for either pleasure or annoyance. She came and went unquestioned, practised interminably, and spent her evenings usually in her own room, developing a hungry capacity for sleep, of which she could not seem to have enough--sleep, where all one's sensibilities were dulled and shame and tragedy forgotten. She had, however, rather more of the society of the children than before, owing to their mother's preoccupation. Nothing could have been more of a drop from her position as princess and lady-of-love in the Leverich domicile, where she had been the center of attraction and interest. Everything seemed terribly unnatural here, and she the most unnatural of all--as if she were clinging temporarily to a ledge in mid-air, waiting for the next thing to happen. Lois had really tried to show some sympathy for the girl, but was held back by her repugnance to Lawson, which inevitably made itself felt. She couldn't understand how Dosia could possibly have allowed herself to get into an equivocal position with such a man--"really not a gentleman," as she complained to Justin, and he had answered with the vague remark that you could never tell about a girl; even in its vagueness the reply was condemning. The people whom Dosia met in the street looked at her with curiously questioning eyes as they talked about casual matters. Mrs. Leverich bowed incidentally as she passed in her carriage, where another visitor was ensconced, a blonde lady from Montreal, in whom her hostess was absorbed. Dosia had been twice to see Miss Bertha, with a blind, desultory counting on the sympathy that had helped her before; but she had been unfortunate in the times for her visits. On the first occasion Mrs. Snow, with majestic demeanor and pursed lips, had kept guard; and on the second the whole feminine part of the family were engaged, in weird pinned-up garments, in the sacred rite of setting out the innumerable house-plants, with the help of a man hired semiannually, for the day, to set out the plants or to take them in. Callers are a very serious thing when you have a man hired by the day, who must be looked after every minute, so that he may be worth his wage. As Mrs. Snow remarked, "People ought to know when to come and when not to." Dosia got no farther than the porch, and though Miss Bertha asked her to come again, and gave her a sprig of sweet geranium, with a kind little pressure of the hand, she was not asked to sit down.