She felt desperately that she was failing in the most obvious duty not to try to make him understand what had happened in his absence. She bethought herself of one fact, the mere statement of which should tell him a thousand times more eloquently than words, something of what she had suffered. "The doctor told me twice that she wouldn't have been sick if she hadn't been weaned." She said this with an accent of immense significance, clasping her hands together hard.
Paul was unpacking his suit-case. "Great Scott! You nursed her six months!" he said conclusively, over his shoulder. "Besides, you _had_ to wean her--don't you remember?"
"Oh, yes; I remember," said Lydia. Her hands dropped to her sides.
"Don't they get over things quickly?" commented Paul, looking around at the baby. "To see her creeping around like a little hop-toad and squeaking that rubber bunny--why, I declare, I don't believe that anything's been the matter with her at all. You and the doctor lost your nerve, I guess."
Three or four days later he was called away again. Their regular routine began. The long, slow days, slid past the house in Bellevue in endless, dreamy procession. Ariadne grew fast, developing constantly new faculties, new powers. By the end of the summer she was no longer a baby, but a person. The young mother felt the same mysterious forces of change and growth working irresistibly in herself. The long summer, thoughtful and solitary, marked the end of one period in her life.
She looked forward shrinkingly to the winter. What would happen to this new self whose growth in her was keeping pace with her child's? What would happen next?
What happened was, in the first week of October, the sudden death of her father. It was sudden only to his wife and daughter, whom, as always, the Judge had tried to spare, at all costs, the knowledge of anything unpleasant. Dr. Melton thought that perhaps the strong man's incredulity of anything for him to fear had a good deal to do with his repeated refusals to allow his wife or daughter to be warned of the danger of apoplexy. Without that hypothesis, it seemed incredible, he told Mrs. Sandworth, that so kind a man could be so cruel.
"Everything's incredible," murmured Mrs. Sandworth, her handkerchief at her eyes, her loving heart aching for the newly-made widow, her lifelong friend.
