Three or four days later he was called away again. Their regular routine began. The long, slow days, slid past the house in Bellevue in endless, dreamy procession. Ariadne grew fast, developing constantly new faculties, new powers. By the end of the summer she was no longer a baby, but a person. The young mother felt the same mysterious forces of change and growth working irresistibly in herself. The long summer, thoughtful and solitary, marked the end of one period in her life. She looked forward shrinkingly to the winter. What would happen to this new self whose growth in her was keeping pace with her child's? What would happen next? CHAPTER XXV A BLACK MILESTONE What happened was, in the first week of October, the sudden death of her father. It was sudden only to his wife and daughter, whom, as always, the Judge had tried to spare, at all costs, the knowledge of anything unpleasant. Dr. Melton thought that perhaps the strong man's incredulity of anything for him to fear had a good deal to do with his repeated refusals to allow his wife or daughter to be warned of the danger of apoplexy. Without that hypothesis, it seemed incredible, he told Mrs. Sandworth, that so kind a man could be so cruel. "Everything's incredible," murmured Mrs. Sandworth, her handkerchief at her eyes, her loving heart aching for the newly-made widow, her lifelong friend. Her brother did not answer. He sat, gnawing savagely on his finger nails, his thoughts centered, as always, on his darling Lydia--fatherless. He had prided himself on his acute insight into human nature in general, and upon his specialized, intensified knowledge of those two women whom he had known so long and studied so minutely; but "I've been a conceited blockhead, and vanity's treacherous as well as damnable," he cried out to his sister some days later, amazed beyond expression at the way in which their loss affected Lydia and her mother. Mrs. Emery's attitude was a revelation to him, a revelation that left him almost as angrily full of grief as she herself. He had thought best on the whole not to disclose to her the substance of the several conversations he had had with his dead friend on the subject of finances. With two prosperous sons, the widow would be well taken care of, he thought, perhaps adding with a little acridity, "just as she always has been, without a thought on her part." But when Mrs. Emery, divining the truth with an awful intuition, came flying to him after the settlement, he was not proof against the fury of her interrogations. If she wanted to know, he would tell her, he thought grimly to himself. "There is nothing left," she began, bursting into his office, "but the house, which has a mortgage, and the insurance--nothing! Nothing!" It was rather soon for her to be resentful, the doctor thought bitterly, misreading the misery on her face. "No," he said. "Had the Judge lost any money--do you know?" "No; I think not."