It is certain that the result was a better feeling between the
two than had existed before. During the long hours of jolting over
branch railroads back to remote settlements, or waiting at cheerless
junctions for delayed trains, or gaily eating impossible meals at
extraordinary country hotels, the ruddy, vigorous father, now growing
both gray and stout, and the tall, slender, darkly handsome girl of
fifteen, were cultivating more things than history and mathematics and
English literature. The most genuine feeling of comradeship sprang up
between the two dissimilar natures, a feeling so strong and so warm
that Sylvia, in addition to her other emotional complications, felt
occasionally a faint pricking of jealousy at seeing her primacy with
her father usurped.
A further factor in her temporary feeling of alienation from him was
the mere physical fact that she saw him much less frequently and that
he had nothing like his usual intimate knowledge of her comings and
goings. And finally, Lawrence, now a too rapidly growing and delicate
lad of eleven, had a series of bronchial colds which kept his mother
much occupied with his care. As far as her family was concerned,
Sylvia was thus left more alone than ever before, and although she had
been trained to too delicate and high a personal pride to attempt the
least concealment of her doings, it was not without relief that she
felt that her parents had but a very superficial knowledge of the
extent and depth to which she was becoming involved in her new
relations.
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