and bizarre to Hattie Tolliver. The sunlight streamed in at the windows and the waiters bobbed in and out of the room serving her daughter. The champagne she refused to drink and when the diamond merchant filled Ellen's glass, she frowned and said, "I wish you wouldn't drink, Ellen. You never know what it leads to."
And when Mr. Schönberg, after telling one or two risqué stories, held a match to Ellen's cigarette, Hattie frowned again and the old look of suspicion came into her eyes. It was Lily Shane who had taught her daughter to behave like a fast woman. She knew that.
It was only when the first excitement of Ellen's return had worn away that Hattie began to feel the dull ache of an unhappiness which she could neither understand nor define. With all the vast optimism of her nature she had fancied the return of Ellen as something quite different from the reality. A hundred times during the long years while her daughter was away, she lived through the experience in her imagination; she saw Ellen taking her place once more in the midst of the family, quarreling cheerfully with Robert, helping her mother about the house, going and coming as the mood struck her. She fancied that Ellen would be, as in the old days, sullen and sometimes unhappy but always dependent just the same, always a rather sulky little girl who would play the piano by the hour while her mother saw to it that there was no work, no annoyance to disturb her.
And now it was quite different. She scarcely saw Ellen save when she went to the Ritz to eat a hurried lunch of fancy, rich foods under the bright eyes of the cheerful Miss Schönberg. The old piano stood in the apartment, silent save when Hattie herself picked out her old tunes in a desperate attack of nostalgia. Ellen had played for her a half dozen times but always on the great piano in her sitting room at the Ritz; it was not the same as in the sentimental, happy days when Hattie, as ruler of her household, sat darning with her family all about her. There was no time
