Chapter 13 - Page 2

Ophir and Banksia roses.

He held her hand and drew her close to him.

He kissed her when they were safe inside, and murmured: "Come, darling--won't you come and be my wife?"

"I will, Ross--whenever you say--but--!" She would not agree to give up her work, and he flung away from her in reckless despair. Mrs. Warden and the girls returned the call as a matter of duty, but came no more; the mother saying that she could not take her daughters to a Servant Girls' Club.

And though the Servant Girls' Club was soon removed to its new quarters and Union House became a quiet, well-conducted hotel, still the two families saw but little of each other.

Mrs. Warden naturally took her son's side, and considered Diantha an unnatural monster of hard-heartedness.

The matter sifted through to the ears of Mrs. Thaddler, who rejoiced in it, and called upon Mrs. Warden in her largest automobile. As a mother with four marriageable daughters, Mrs. Warden was delighted to accept and improve the acquaintance, but her aristocratic Southern soul was inwardly rebellious at the ancestorlessness and uncultured moneyed pride of her new friend.

"If only Madam Weatherstone had stayed!" she would complain to her daughters. "She had Family as well as Wealth."

"There's young Mrs. Weatherstone, mother--" suggested Dora.

"A nobody!" her mother replied. "She has the Weatherstone money, of course, but no Position; and what little she has she is losing by her low tastes. She goes about freely with Diantha Bell--her own housekeeper!"

"She's not her housekeeper now, mother--"

"Well, it's all the same! She _was!_ And a mere general servant before that! And now to think that when Ross is willing to overlook it all and marry her, she won't give it up!"

They were all agreed on this point, unless perhaps that the youngest had her inward reservations. Dora had always liked Diantha better than had the others.

Young Mrs. Weatherstone stayed in her big empty house for a while, and as Mrs. Warden said, went about frequently with Diantha Bell. She liked Mrs. Bell, too--took her for long stimulating rides in her comfortable car, and insisted that first one and then the other of them should have a bit of vacation at her seashore home before the winter's work grew too heavy.

With Mrs. Bell she talked much of how Diantha had helped the town.

"She has no idea of the psychic effects, Mrs. Bell," said she. "She sees the business, and she has a great view of all it is going to do for women to come; but I don't think she realizes how much she is doing right now for women here--and men, too. There were my friends the Pornes; they were 'drifting apart,' as the novels have it--and no wonder. Isabel was absolutely no good as a housekeeper; he