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Updated: May 24, 2025
If Sylvia wondered, as she dropped down the heights to the valley, what her reception might be at her aunt's ceremonious household when she entered escorted by a strange hatless man in blue overalls, her fancy fell immeasurably short of the actual ensuing sensation. Mrs. Marshall-Smith, her stepson, Felix Morrison, and old Mr.
She did not by any means always sit in the hotel and watch Pauline care for different portions of Aunt Victoria's body. Mrs. Marshall-Smith took, on principle, a drive every day, and Sylvia was her favorite companion.
Marshall-Smith explained further: "To keep him up in his studies. He doesn't learn anything in his school, you know. They never do. It's only for the atmosphere the sports; you know, they play cricket where he is now and the desirable class of boys he meets.... All the boys have tutors in vacation times to coach them for the college-entrance examinations."
After dinner, when Mrs. Marshall-Smith lifted her eyebrows at Sylvia and rose to go, Arnold made no bones of his horror at the prospect of a tête-
From that shapeless, looming, black mass, Sylvia fled away actually and physically, springing to her feet wherever she was, entering another room, taking up some other occupation. Just once she had the faintest sign from beyond the wall that she was not alone in her fear of this horror. Marshall-Smith gathered about her.
It burst from him with surprising effect. Mrs. Marshall-Smith was, as she had said, only human, and at this she rose, her delicate face quiet and impassive, and shook out the shimmering folds of her beautiful dress. She said casually, picking up her fan and evidently preparing for some sort of adjournment: "Oh, Arnold, don't be so absurd.
Mrs. Marshall-Smith, deliberating with bated breath between broadcloth and blue panama, did not notice the pause. She did, however, add a final comment on the matter, some moments later, when she observed, "How any girl in her senses can go on studying, when she's engaged to a man who needs her as much as Arnold needs Judith!"
Marshall-Smith, alarmed by the prospect of a passage-at-arms, decreed quietly that they should both sleep on the question and take it up the next morning. Sylvia had not slept. She had lain in her bed, wide-eyed; a series of pictures passing before her eyes with the unnatural vividness of hallucinations. These pictures were not only of Arnold, of Arnold again, of Arnold and Judith.
It fairly frightened me to see how she was burning up when he was near. She'll insist on his reforming, of course she ought to but " "Suppose he doesn't reform to suit her," suggested Mrs. Marshall-Smith, stirring her coffee. "He's been reformed at intervals ever since he was fifteen. He never could stay through a whole term in any decent boys' school." Here was a vista, ruthlessly opened.
But as the words still echoed in the air, she was struck to see how absolutely her immediate future, all her future, perhaps, depended on the outcome of that conversation she herself had begun. She looked fixedly at her aunt, trying to prepare herself for anything. But she was not prepared for what Mrs. Marshall-Smith did.
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