“I think if the Adamses do come in to-night we will have a little salad, there will be enough left from the chicken, and some cake and tea,” she observed presently.  “We won’t have the table set, because both the maids have asked to go out, but Maria can put on my India muslin apron and pass the things.  I will have the salad made before they go, and I will make the tea.  We can have it on the table in here.”  Ida indicated, by a graceful motion of her shoulder, a pretty little tea-table loaded with Dresden china.

“All right,” replied Harry, with a baffled tone.  He felt baffled without knowing exactly why.

Ida took up another sheet of the Herald, a fashion page was uppermost.  She read something and smiled.  “It says that gowns made like Maria’s new one are the most fetching ones of the season,” she said.  “I am so glad I have the skirt plaited.”

Harry made a gesture of assent.  He felt, without in the least knowing why, like a man who had been completely worsted in a hand-to-hand combat.  He felt humiliated and unhappy.  His first wife, even with her high temper and her ready tongue, had never caused him such a sense of abjectness.  He had often felt angry with her, but never with himself.  She had never really attacked his self-respect as this woman did.  He did not dare look up from his newspaper for a while, for he realized that he should experience agony at seeing the beautiful, radiant face of his second wife opposite him instead of the worn, stern, but altogether loving and single-hearted face of his first.  He was glad when Maria came down-stairs, and looked up and greeted her with a smile of reassuring confidence.  Maria’s pretty little face was still tear-stained, although she had bathed it with cold water.  She also took up a sheet of the Sunday paper.

“Did you see Alice Lundy’s new hat in church to-day, dear?” Ida presently asked her, and her manner was exactly as if nothing had occurred to disturb anybody.

Maria looked at her with a sort of wonder, which made her honest face almost idiotic.

“No, ma’am,” said she.

Maria had been taught to say “yes, ma’am” and “no, ma’am” by her own mother, whose ideas of etiquette were old-fashioned, and dated from the precepts of her own childhood.

“It is a little better not to say ma’am,” said Ida, sweetly.  “I think that expression is not used so much as formerly.”

Maria looked at her with a quick defiance, which gave her an almost startling resemblance to her own mother.

“Yes, ma’am,” said she.

Harry’s mouth twitched behind his paper.  Ida said no more.  She continued to smile, but she was not reading the paper which she held.  She was making new plans to gain her own ends.  She was seeking new doors of liberty for her own ways, in lieu of those which she saw were closed to her, and by the time dinner was served she was quite sure that she had succeeded.