“Well, I hate cleverness, then; you and Anne are always being clever. You’ll tire Aunt Kate a lot more than Madge’s party would.” She stood there, large and fair, the features of her small inexpressive face so like her mother’s, the lines of her relaxed inviting body so different from Mrs. Drover’s righteous curves. Her painted eyes rested curiously on Mrs. Clephane. “You don’t suppose she spent her time in Europe sitting at home like this, do you?” she asked the company with simplicity. There was a stricken pause. Kate filled it by saying with a laugh: “You’ll think I might as well have, when I tell you I’ve never in my life been to a cabaret-party.” Lilla’s stare deepened; she seemed hardly able to take the statement in. “What _did_ you do with your evenings, then?” she questioned, after an apparently hopeless search for alternatives. Mrs. Drover had grown pink and pursed-up; even Nollie Tresselton’s quick smile seemed congealed. But Kate felt herself carrying it off on wings. “Very often I just sat at home alone, and thought of you all here, and of our first evening together--this very evening.” She saw Anne colour a little, and felt the quick pressure of her arm. That they should have found each other again, she and Anne! The butler threw open the drawing-room door with solemnity. “A gentleman has called in his motor for Mrs. Gates; he sends word that he’s in a hurry, madam, please.” “Oh,” said Lilla, leaping upon her fan and vanity bag. She was out of the room before the butler had rounded off his sentence. Mrs. Drover, her complacency restored, sank down on a plump Clephane sofa that corresponded in richness and ponderosity with her own person. “Lilla’s such a baby!” she sighed; then, with a freer breath, addressed herself to sympathetic enquiries as to Mrs. Clephane’s voyage. It was evident that, as far as the family were concerned, Anne’s mother had been born again, seven days earlier, on the gang-plank of the liner that had brought her home. On these terms they were all delighted to have her back; and Mrs. Drover declared herself particularly thankful that the voyage had been so smooth. V. Smoothness, Kate Clephane could see, was going to mark the first stage of her re-embarkation on the waters of life. The truth came to her, after that first evening, with the surprised discovery that the family had refrained from touching on her past not so much from prudery, or discretion even, as because such retrogressions were jolting uncomfortable affairs, and the line of least resistance flowed forward, not back. She had been right in guessing that her questions as to what people thought of her past were embarrassing to Landers, but wrong in the interpretation of his embarrassment. Like every one else about her, he was caught up in the irresistible flow of existence, which somehow reminded her less of a mighty river tending seaward than of a moving stairway revolving on itself. “Only they all think it’s a river....” she mused.