XII


But when her mother, now Mrs. Moses Feldt, did return, Linda was
conscious of a keen disappointment. Somehow she never actually came
back. It wasn't only that, after so many years together, she occupied
a room with another than Linda, but her manner was changed; it had
lost all freedom of heart and speech. The new Mrs. Feldt was heavily
polite to her husband's daughters; Linda saw that she liked Pansy,
but Judith made her uncomfortable. She expressed this in an isolated
return of the old confidences:

"That girl," she said sharply, "likes petting. She can talk all
night about her soul and beauty, and play the piano till her fingers
drop off, but I--I--know. You can't fool me where they are concerned.
I can recognize an unhealthy sign. I never believed in going to all
those concerts and kidding yourself into a fever. I may have shown
myself a time, but you mark my word--I was honest compared to Judith
Feldt. Don't you be impressed with all her art talk and the books
she reads. I was looking into one yesterday, and it made me blush;
you can believe it or not, it takes some book for that!"

At the same time she treated Judith with a studious sweetness. Mr.
Moses Feldt--Linda always thought of him as that--was a miracle of
kindly cheerfulness. He made his wife and her daughter, and his own
girls, an unbroken succession of elaborate and costly presents.
"What's it for if not to spend on those you love?" he would remark,
bringing a small jeweler's box wrapped in creamy-pink paper from his