Lavinia took from the words an implication more humiliating than her
daughter-in-law had intended. But this was no time for recrimination.
She must hold on to herself. The canker in her heart had eaten so deep
that help must come, or she would go mad. Mechanically she reached
for the volume on the table. Her mind went back to those first years
in Springdale, when she had conned Browning in an effort to shine in
Mrs. Henderson’s club. Was it indeed for this that she had memorized
poems, delved in abstruse literary criticism--that she might win Mrs.
Henderson’s approbation? One half of her knew that it was not, while
the other half as stoutly denied an ulterior motive for this, or for
any other deliberate act of her life.
While she was giving the attic its annual overhauling, she had come
upon the yellow files of the Bromfield Sentinel, the edges broken like
pie crust. She had read again the spirited account of the meeting at
which Mrs. David Trench was elected secretary of the most intellectual
club in Springdale. Who was there in her girlhood home for whom this
triumph would provide a thrill of gratification or a sting of envy?
Ellen knew all about it. Isabel had long since removed to California.
Her mother was dead. The girls of her social circle? The Browning craze
had not invaded Bromfield, and there was not one among her old friends
for whose opinion she cared a straw.