unbending pride that so coldly withstood her, and for the sake of
that she kept her animosity in check. She knew her turn would come.

Meantime, she concentrated all her energies upon the father, and
with such marked success that within two months of their meeting
they were married. Sylvia had gone to that wedding in such
bitterness of soul and seething inward revolt as she had never
experienced before. She did not know how she had come through it,
so great had been her disgust. But that was nearly six weeks ago,
and she had had time to recover. She had spent part of that period
very peacefully and happily at the seaside with a young married
cousin and her babies, and it had rested and refreshed her. She
had come back with a calm resolve to endure what had to be endured
in a philosophical spirit, to face the inevitable without futile
rebellion.

Girt in an impenetrable armour of reserve, she braced herself to
bear her burdens unflinching, so that none might ever guess how it
galled her. And on that golden evening in September she prepared
herself with a smiling countenance to meet her enemy in the gate.

They were returning from a prolonged honeymoon among the Italian
lakes, and she had made everything ready for their coming. The
great west-facing bedroom, which her father had never occupied
since her mother's death, had been redecorated and prepared as for
a bride. Sylvia had changed it completely, so that it might never
again look as it had looked in the old days. She had hated doing
it, but it had been in a measure a relief to her torn heart. It
was thus she rendered inviolate that inner sanctuary of memory
which none might enter.