home as a permanent part of it. Eddy was constantly with her in England
in the intervals of his undergraduate life; but how urge upon Imogen more
frequent meetings when her absence would leave the father desolate? The
summers had come to be their only times of reunion and Mrs. Upton had more
and more come to look forward to them with an inward tremor of uncertainty
and discomfort. For, under everything, above everything, was the fact, and
she felt herself now to be looking it hard in the face, that Imogen had
always, obviously, emphatically, been fondest of her father. It had been
from the child's earliest days, this more than fondness, this placid
partizanship. In looking back it seemed to her that Imogen had always
disapproved of her, had always shown her disapproval, gently, even
tenderly, but with a sad firmness. Her liberation from her husband's
standard was all very well; she cared nothing for Imogen's standard either,
in so far as it was an echo, a reflection; only, for her daughter not to
care for her, to disapprove of her, to be willing that she should go out of
her life,--there was the rub; and the fact that she should be considering
it over a tea-table in Surrey while Imogen was battling with all the somber
accompaniments of grief in New York, challenged her not to deny some
essential defect in her own maternity. She was an honest woman, and after
her hour of thought she could not deny it, though she could not see clearly
where it lay; but the recognition was but a step to the owning that she
must try to right herself. And at this point,--she had drawn a deep breath
over it, straightening herself in her chair,--her friends came in from
their drive and put an end to her solitude.

For the first years of her semi-detached life Mrs. Upton had been as gay as
a very decorous young grass-widow can be. Her whole existence, until her
marriage, which had dropped, or lifted, her to graver levels, had been
passed among elaborate social conditions, and wherever she might go she
found the protection of a recognized background. She had multitudes of