Lavinia and Theodora were alone in the big house with Drusilla. Lary
thought it absurd for them to occupy so much room. He would be going
to New York in the early fall, now that Springdale had nothing to hold
him. His mother might as well return to Vine Cottage. She had built the
great Colonial house in order to make a propitious marriage for Sylvia.
A similar need would never confront her.
“Move into this little place? Indeed I shall do nothing of the sort. In
fact, I have made up my mind to go back to Bromfield.”
“Bromfield?” The tone carried something dangerously like a sneer.
“The town was good enough for your grandparents,” his mother retorted
hotly. “I won’t have a relative left here but Eileen, and she will
certainly never be any comfort to me. It’s a shame, the way she could
forget her father in less than a month. She acts as if Dr. Schubert
were her own father. I don’t believe she has shed a tear. No, I
wouldn’t stop a day in Springdale for that ungrateful girl.”
“But your friends of a lifetime are here.”
“You can make new friends in New York. Why shouldn’t I? You think of me
as an old woman, Larimore. I don’t like it. The day has gone by when a
woman of fifty has to sit in the chimney-corner. I have written to Ted,
telling him that I want to buy back the old home. You shall remodel it
for me. That would be a work you could take pride in--the house your
great-grandfather built.”