"What a magnificent woman she is," thought Vivian, as he threw himself into a chair, and began to entertain little Nellie with some funny anecdote, intensely conscious all the while of the stately, stern presence that ignored him.
Suddenly her gown brushed his knees as she passed him on her way to the door, and he glanced up rather uneasily.
"I'm only going to lay baby on the bed," she said in a low tone, not without the trace of contempt she could never nowadays keep out of her voice when speaking to him. But in the other room, while she was bending over her little one, there came to her one of those humorous suggestions that visit us now and then, to lighten our periods of depression.
"Man is, after all, only a kind of stomach, and friendship but an eating together." The sentence was from Carlyle, perhaps; anyway, it was applicable to the situation. What was the use of making such a serious affair out of living?
"Oh, yes, it is easy enough to be upon friendly terms 'if friendship is but an eating together,'" Amanda said to herself, grimly.
Half an hour later Mrs. Powell, sitting, flushed and anxious at the head of her hospitable table, rejoiced at the amenities that passed between her two guests, and whispered to her own heart that everything was coming out right, in the end. And to this determined optimism Amanda, who interpreted her mother's beaming looks perfectly, made no sign of dissent. But Vivian, even with his facile acceptance of all things in his favor, could not help but realize to-day, very strongly, that Amanda would never be to him, so long as she lived, anything but an icicle. With her temper, it might have been worse than that.