* * * * *
Lydia received Victoria's letter on the day of her return to the cottage.
Her mother remained in London.
Susy welcomed her sister affectionately, but with the sidelong looks of
the observer. Ever since the evening of Lady Tatham's visit when Lydia
had come back with white face and red eyes from her walk with Harry
Tatham, and when the following night had been broken for Susy by the
sound of her sister's weeping in the room next to her, it had been
recognized by the family that the Tatham affair had ended in disaster,
and that Duddon was henceforth closed to them. Lydia told her mother
enough to plunge that poor lady into even greater wonder than before at
the hopeless divergence of young people to-day from the ways and customs
of their grandmothers; and then begged piteously that nothing more might
be said to her. Mrs. Penfold cried and kissed her; and for many days
tears fell on the maternal knitting needles, as the fading vision of
Lydia, in a countess' coronet, curtesying to her sovereign, floated
mockingly through the maternal mind. To Susy Lydia was a little more
explicit; but she showed herself so sunk in grief and self-abasement,
that Susy had not the heart for either probing or sarcasm. It was not a
broken heart, but a sore conscience--a warm, natural penitence, that she
beheld. Lydia was not yet "splendid," and Susy could not make anything
tragic out of her.
At least, on what appeared.
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