of the reasons for her riot with their grandfather; but if she discussed the affair here with Bennet, she was sure to involve herself in another tumult. She had not admitted to herself the full effect upon her of the conflicts at St. Florentin until she found how she dreaded repeating the ordeal with her uncle or with her cousin.
"We'll go to the Blackstone?" Bennet invited. "Julia straggles in there with some people to-night, I think I recall."
He meant that they would be chaperoned in the same dining room by his sister and her party; but Ethel did not require that. Of course she was going out with her cousin, and every one who knew her would know him; but if he were not her cousin, she was too good a Westerner to hesitate about going to dinner with him.
"I'll have to wear my suit," was all she said.
At a table for two in the warm, gay, east dining room of the Blackstone, beside a window overlooking the lighted avenue, she let Bennet order his usual, well-selected and generous dinner. She was very hungry and relaxed; as some time to-morrow she must submit herself again to the strain of antagonism to those dearest to her here, at the bidding which had come from those dearer to her yet, who were dead; but for this hour it was very agreeable to forget quarrels of every sort and just have a good dinner, as Bennet was insisting, and to talk to him about their old trifles and listen to the lively, new music.
"You look rather like yourself now," Bennet praised her proudly when she smiled at something he said; he glanced from her to the people at the surrounding tables, and he found many gazing toward his table as people always did when he had "Eth" with him.
