"For," said she, "I can never
forget how kind Aunt Marcia was to _me_!"
Such wide-spread beneficence as this had not, of course, excluded her
sister-in-law's daughters. It was really to her aunt Lydia that Rosamund
Marshall was indebted for her year at the New York school; her mother had
unquestioningly accepted Mrs. Rhodes's declaration that the institution
was eminently fashionable and desirable, and her father had committed her
with the greatest confidence and good-will to the conductor of the
east-bound Lake Shore express. And it was to her aunt that the girl was
now looking, after an obscure and wistful fashion, for an introduction
into society, in which, according to the belief of the family, Mrs.
Rhodes occupied a secure and brilliant position. Rosamund had been
revolving matters in her pretty and self-willed little head, and in her
proud and self-willed little heart she had decided upon a formal debut.
Her mother was completely nonplussed; she would as soon have wrestled
with the differential calculus. "Why, dear me," she stammered, "there's
Alice; she never came out, and I don't see but what she's got along all
right: good home, nice husband, and everything she wants. And Jane,
now--"
"Oh, _Jane_!" said Rosy, in disdain.
Then she sulked, and reproached her mother with the flat and unprofitable
summer that had followed her return from school, and asked pointedly if
the coming winter was to be like it.
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