Lydia burst into a hysterical laugh. "Flora Burgess is too killing!" she cried. "She was here in the afternoon to get details, and I just let her wander around and see what she could make out. I was too busy to pay any attention to her--Oh, Etta! I was dead and buried with fatigue before the people even began to come. I can't even remember much about it except that every single thing was wrong. That about 'cosmopolitan amplitude--' Oh, isn't Flora too funny!--means having music after dinner, I suppose. I don't know what else."
"Of course," said Marietta, rising to go, "it doesn't make any difference what it was really like! Only the people that were there know that. The report in the paper--"
"Oh, Marietta, what a thing to say--that it's all pretense, every bit--and not--"
Marietta went on steadily and mordantly: "I don't know how you feel about it, but _I_ shouldn't be very easy in my mind to have my only sister's name not on the list of guests at my most exclusive social function."
Dr. Melton, who made Lydia a professional call that morning, found her with reddened eyes, slowly washing and putting away innumerable dirty dishes. She told him that the second girl, apparently overcome by the events of the day before, had disappeared during the night. Dr. Melton thrust out his lips and said nothing, but he took off his coat, put on an apron, and, pushing his patient away from the dishpan, attacked a huge pile of sticky plates. He worked rapidly and silently, with a surgeon's deftness. Lydia sat quiet for some time, looking at him. Finally, "I hadn't been crying because of dirty dishes," she told him; "I'm not such a child as that. Marietta has been here. She said some things pretty hard to bear about her not having been invited to that awful dinner party. I didn't know what she was talking about a good deal of the time--it was all about what a snob and traitor to my family I was growing to be."
"You mustn't blame Marietta too much," said the doctor, rinsing and beginning to dry the plates with what seemed to Lydia's fatigued languor really miraculous speed. "It's true that she watches your social advance with the calm disinterestedness of a cat watching somebody pour cream out of a jug. She wants her saucerful. But look here. Did I ever tell you about the man Montaigne speaks of who spent all his life to acquire the skill necessary to throw a grain of millet through the eye of a needle? Well, that man was proud of it, but poor Marietta's haunted by doubts as to whether in her case it's been worth while. It makes her naturally inclined to be snappy."