She had left her
husband behind her, but had brought her children, to whom Isabel now
played with equal munificence and tenderness the part of
maiden-aunt. Mr. Ludlow, toward the last, had been able to snatch a
few weeks from his forensic triumphs and, crossing the ocean with
extreme rapidity, had spent a month with the two ladies in Paris
before taking his wife home. The little Ludlows had not yet, even from
the American point of view, reached the proper tourist-age; so that
while her sister was with her Isabel had confined her movements to a
narrow circle. Lily and the babies had joined her in Switzerland in
the month of July, and they had spent a summer of fine weather in an
Alpine valley where the flowers were thick in the meadows and the
shade of great chestnuts made a resting place for such upward
wanderings as might be undertaken by ladies and children on warm
afternoons. They had afterwards reached the French capital, which
was worshipped, and with costly ceremonies, by Lily, but thought of as
noisily vacant by Isabel, who in these days made use of her memory
of Rome as she might have done, in a hot and crowded room, of a
phial of something pungent hidden in her handkerchief.
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