“Listen, Emily, you take off those stockings, too. They’re vulgar. If you don’t, I’ll have to do it myself.” “I don’t see why I can’t wear them!” Emily stormed. “I’m grown up, I’m sixteen, and Fanchon has a pair like them.” Mrs. Carter flushed. “You go up-stairs and take them off!” she cried, with her first dash of anger. “I don’t want my girl to look like Fanchon!” Emily grasped the banisters and shouted. “She’s lovely; she’s stylish! I think you and papa are just awful to her. You’re setting Willie against her, too. Leigh thinks so; he says he’d do anything, he’d die for her!” Mrs. Carter looked a little startled, but she rallied. “Leigh’s only eighteen,” she observed dryly. “It’s very easy to die for people at eighteen! You’re impertinent to your mother, Emily. Go up-stairs and study for an hour. Mind you take off those stockings!” Emily began to cry. She cried easily, large tears rolling out of her light-blue eyes. She went up-stairs looking like Niobe, and she cried all the time she was taking off her stockings. Mrs. Carter stopped rocking and thought. She thought deeply. Emily’s outburst and Leigh’s devotion were such obvious things, and yet-- She lifted her handkerchief and pressed it against her trembling lips. Was William really being set against his wife? Mrs. Carter was a good woman, and the thought distressed her. She did not resume her rocking, she sat motionless, looking straight ahead of her, her face red. She was still sitting there when Daniel, returning early from court, stopped at the door and looked in. “What’s the matter, mother?” he asked pleasantly. “You look out of sorts.” “Oh, Dan, please come in here a moment; I want to talk to you.” Daniel looked a little surprised, but he came in obediently, putting a pile of law-books and papers on the table as he sat down to listen. His mother saw the papers. “Did you win that case, Dan?” His face lit up. “Yes. Just heard the verdict. We’ve got it, mother!” She flushed with pleasure. “Dan, the judge says you’ll be a great man some day. You’re a born orator!” “Nonsense!” said Daniel, but he blushed. It seemed to his mother’s anxious eyes that he was less worn and tired than usual; but her mind was full of other things. “Dan,” she began in a low, horrified voice, “have you seen anything? I mean--Fanchon and that--that man?” Daniel shook his head. “I’m too busy, mother.” Mrs. Carter sank back in her rocking-chair and looked weak. “I saw them this morning. I’d been to market. Mrs. Payson came along in her new limousine, and she stopped and picked me up. I don’t know why it had to happen so, but the chauffeur took the short cut for this house--you know, the little lane behind the Methodist church.” She paused for breath, and Daniel nodded. He was very grave now. “As we turned the corner we both saw them--I mean Mrs. Payson and I--and of course the chauffeur did, too, come to think of it. Fanchon was talking to that man--I think his name’s Corwin.”