The perception of this strain in their relation increased Mary’s reluctance to bring the topic up herself, in default of a lead from Paula, out of nowhere.  It almost seemed as if Paula consciously avoided giving her such a lead, sheered away whenever she found they were “getting warm” in that direction.

There were hours when the undertaking she had committed herself to with Wallace Hood seemed fantastic.  Between two persons like her father and Paula a meddler could make such an incalculable amount of mischief.  All the current maxims of conduct would support her in a refusal to interfere.  It was exclusively their affair, wasn’t it?  Why not let them settle it in their own way?

Yet there were other hours when she put her procrastinations down to sheer cowardice.  This occurred whenever she got a letter from her aunt at Hickory Hill.

Miss Wollaston was a dutiful but exceedingly cautious correspondent, but beneath the surface of her brisk little bulletins were many significant implications.  Rush had made two or three trips to town for consultations with Martin Whitney ...  Doctor Steinmetz, presence unaccounted for, had been a guest one day at lunch...  Graham’s father had come out one Saturday and after he had been exhaustively shown over the place the men had talked until all hours....  The building program was to be curtailed for the present; to be resumed, perhaps when prices weren’t so high nor labor so hard to get....  The new Holstein calves had come.  Mary had been told, hadn’t she, of the decision to constitute the herd in this manner instead of buying all milking cows....  Sylvia, declaring that Rush and Graham had got too solemn to live with, had finally obeyed her mother and gone home to the Stannards’ summer place at Lake Geneva.

Mary read these letters to Paula as they came in the hope of provoking some question that would make it possible to tell John Wollaston’s wife the tale of his necessities, but nothing of the sort happened.  Paula did observe (a little uneasily?) apropos of Steinmetz’ visit: 

“John says he’s taken quite a fancy to him.  He told me he was going to get him to come out if he could.”

The other casts brought up nothing whatever.

As it happened Mary paid dear for her procrastination.  Paula sent her into town one day with a long list of errands, a transparently factitious list, which, taken in connection with an unusual interest she displayed in the item of lunch, made it more than sufficiently plain to Mary that for the day she wasn’t wanted at Ravinia.

She concealed, successfully she thought, the shock she felt at these new tactics of Paula’s, studied the list and said she thought she should be able to return on the three o’clock train.  She made a point however of not coming back until the four-fifteen.  It was nearly six before she got back to the cottage, but the contented lazy tone in which Paula from up-stairs answered her hail, made it plain that her tardiness had not been remarked.  However Paula had spent her day, the upshot of it was satisfactory.