“It was perfectly disgraceful! Is there any hot water on the stove, Bertha? I want a glassful to drink. I hope you left a piece of stale bread in the oven for me, I feel a little need of something. Oh, yes, of course there was a supper, we had lobster Newburg and champagne, but I didn’t take any; a cup of beef-tea or a little cereal would have suited me much better. It’s a mercy if I haven’t taken my death of cold. It was Dosia Linden’s goings-on that I was speaking of; she’s a bold sort of a piece, evidently, quite different from what I thought. Sh—William’s gone up-stairs, hasn’t he?” Mrs. Snow dropped her voice mysteriously. “My dear, she and Lawson Barr sat hidden under an umbrella all the way home, and never spoke a word. You can’t tell _me_! Never said a word that anyone could hear. When she came into the dining-room at the Leverichs’, her face was scarlet, and she couldn’t even look at anyone, though she talked enough for ten while he played some queer thing on the piano. You can just ask Ada.” Miss Bertha had preserved an immovable countenance throughout the monologue, but her eye now sought her sister’s and received a swift glance of confirmation from that silent and discreet damsel. The confirmation brought a shock to Miss Bertha—fond of the trivial and unimportant in gossip, the scandal which hurt the young devolved a hurt on her, too. As mothers who have lost children feel a tenderness for those who do not belong to them, so Miss Bertha, who had lost her youth, felt toward the youth in others. Her mother’s small mind yet had an uncanny power of partial divination, gained from years of experience and espial, that irritated while it impressed. “Her face was probably red from the wind and the rain,” said Miss Bertha, in a matter-of-fact tone, regardless of her mother’s contemptuous sniff. “What kind of a time did you have, Ada? Did you see anything of Mr. Sutton?” “Just a little,” replied Ada temperately. This time it was the mother’s and Miss Bertha’s eyes that telegraphed. “Ada, my dear, you may take my shawls up-stairs. She was with him _all_ the time. I hope he saw enough of Dosia Linden’s bold actions to disgust him, at any rate. Yes, my dear, everything was managed very beautifully at the Leverichs’, and it was all very elegant; but she is a little common—Mrs. Leverich, I mean. She was really quite put out because we hadn’t driven back faster. There was a Mr. Girard who had come out from the city, and she wanted Miss Dosia to meet him before he left—he had just come back from somewhere in the West. She really made quite a time about it. And there’s a sort of vulgar display about her that I don’t care for; you can see she’s Lawson’s brother. Oh, well, don’t take me up so, Bertha; you know what I mean, well enough. You have such a sharp way with you sometimes, like your dear father’s family. William—_Wil-liam_!” “Yes, mother.”