in "class meeting," of the superior facilities for stock raising on the
higher foot-hills; she resuscitated her dead and gone Missouri relations
in her daily speech, to a manifest invidious comparison with the living;
she revived even the incidents of her early married life with the same
baleful intent. The acquisition of a few "biled shirts" by Hiram for
festive appearances with Cressy painfully reminded her that he had
married her in "hickory;" she further accented the change by herself
appearing in her oldest clothes, on the hypothesis that it was necessary
for some one to keep up the traditions of the past.

Her attitude towards Cressy would have been more decided had she ever
possessed the slightest influence over her, or had even understood her
with the intuitive sympathies of the maternal relations. Yet she went
so far as to even openly regret the breaking off of the match with Seth
Davis, whose family, at least, still retained the habits and traditions
she revered; but she was promptly silenced by her husband informing her
that words "that had to be tuk back" had already passed between him and
Seth's father, and that, according to those same traditions, blood was
more likely to be spilled than mingled. Whether she was only withheld
from attempting a reconciliation herself through lack of tact and
opportunity remains to be seen. For the present she encouraged Masters's
attentions under a new and vague idea that a flirtation which distracted
Cressy from her studies was displeasing to McKinstry and inimical to
his plans. Blindly ignorant of Mr. Ford's possible relations to her
daughter, and suspecting nothing, she felt towards him only a dull
aversion as being the senseless pivot of her troubles. Seeing no one,
and habitually closing her ears to any family allusion to Cressy's
social triumphs, she was unaware of even the popular admiration their
memorable waltz had excited.