Selma was spared the embarrassment of her first husband's presence. Divorce is no bar to ordinary feminine curiosity as to the whereabouts of a former partner for life, and she had proved no exception to the rule. Mrs. Earle had kept her posted as to Babcock's career since their separation, and what she learned had tended merely to demonstrate the wisdom and justice of her action. As a divorced man he had, after a time, resumed the free and easy, coarse companionship to which he had been partial before his marriage, and had gradually become a heavy drinker. Presently he had neglected his business, a misfortune of which a rival concern had been quick to take advantage. The trend of his affairs had been steadily downhill, and had come to a crisis three months before Littleton's death, when, in order to avoid insolvency, he sold out his factory and business to the rival company, and accepted at the same hands the position of manager in a branch office in a city further west. Consequently, Selma could feel free from molestation or an appeal to her sensibilities. She preferred to think of Babcock as completely outside her life, as dead to her, and she would have disliked the possibility of meeting him in the flesh while shopping on Central avenue. It had been the only drawback to her proposed return to Benham.
During the years of Selma's second marriage Benham had waxed rapidly in population and importance. People had been attracted thither by the varied industries of the city--alike those in search of fortune, and those offering themselves for employment in the mills, oil-works, and pork factories; and at the date of Littleton's death it boasted over one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants. It was already the second city of the State in point of population, and was freely acknowledged to be the most wide-awake and enterprising. The civic spirit of Benham was reputed to be constantly and increasingly alert and progressive, notwithstanding the river Nye still ran the color of bean-soup above where it was drawn for drinking purposes, and the ability of a plumber, who had become an alderman, to provide a statue or lay out a public park was still unquestioned by the majority. Even to-day, when trained ability has obtained recognition in many quarters, the Benhamites at large are apt to resent criticism as aristocratic fault-finding; yet at this time that saving minority of souls who refused to regard everything which Benham did as perfection, and whose subsequent forlorn hopes and desperately won victories have little by little taught the community wisdom, if not modesty, was beginning to utter disagreeable strictures.