He smiled, a glimmer of humorous understanding in his fine dark eyes.
"Yes, I know," he said.

A silence fell between them. Lydia was one of those rare women who do
not object to silence. It seemed to her that she had always lived
alone with her ambitions, which could not be shared, and her bitter
knowledge, which was never to be spoken of. But now she stirred
uneasily in her chair, aware of the intent expression in his eyes.
Her troubled thoughts reverted to the little picture which had
fluttered to the floor from somebody's keeping only an hour before.

"I've had visitors this morning," she told him, with purpose.

"Ah! people are sure to be curious and interested," he commented.

"They were Mrs. Dodge and her daughter and Mrs. Dix and Ellen," she
explained.

"That must have been pleasant," he murmured perfunctorily. "Are
you--do you find yourself becoming at all interested in the people
about here? Of course it is easy to see you come to us from quite
another world."

She shook her head.

"Oh, no," she said quickly. "--If you mean that I am superior in any
way to the people of Brookville; I'm not, at all. I am really a very
ordinary sort of a person. I've not been to college and--I've always
worked, harder than most, so that I've had little opportunity