It won’t be Mr. Harlow, anyway.  I’m pretty sure of that, even if he has started in to get his divorce. (And he has.  I heard Aunt Hattie tell Mother so last week.) But Mother doesn’t like him.  I’m sure she doesn’t.  He makes her awfully nervous.  Oh, she laughs and talks with him—­seems as if she laughs even more with him than she does with anybody else.  But she’s always looking around for somebody else to talk to; and I’ve seen her get up and move off just as he was coming across the room toward her, and I’m just sure she saw him.  There’s another reason, too, why I think Mother isn’t going to choose him for her lover.  I heard something she said to him one day.

She was sitting before the fire in the library, and he came in.  There were other people there, quite a lot of them; but Mother was all alone by the fireplace, her eyes looking fixed and dreamy into the fire.  I was in the window-seat around the corner of the chimney reading; and I could see Mother in the mirror just as plain as could be.  She could have seen me, too, of course, if she’d looked up.  But she didn’t.

I never even thought of hearing anything I hadn’t ought, and I was just going to get down to go and speak to Mother myself, when Mr. Harlow crossed the room and sat down on the sofa beside her.

“Dreaming, Madge?” he said, low and soft, his soulful eyes just devouring her lovely face. (I read that, too, in a book last week.  I just loved it!)

Mother started and flushed up.

“Oh, Mr. Harlow!” she cried. (Mother always calls him “Mr.”  That’s another thing.  He always calls her “Madge,” you know.) “How do you do?” Then she gave her quick little look around to see if there wasn’t somebody else near for her to talk to.  But there wasn’t.

“But you do dream, of the old days, sometimes, Madge, don’t you?” he began again, soft and low, leaning a little nearer.

“Of when I was a child and played dolls before this very fireplace?  Well, yes, perhaps I do,” laughed Mother.  And I could see she drew away a little.  “There was one doll with a broken head that—­”

“I was speaking of broken hearts,” interrupted Mr. Harlow, very meaningfully.

“Broken hearts!  Nonsense!  As if there were such things in the world!” cried Mother, with a little toss to her head, looking around again with a quick little glance for some one else to talk to.

But still there wasn’t anybody there.

They were all over to the other side of the room talking, and paying no attention to Mother and Mr. Harlow, only the violinist.  He looked and looked, and acted nervous with his watch-chain.  But he didn’t come over.  I felt, some way, that I ought to go away and not hear any more; but I couldn’t without showing them that I had been there.  So I thought it was better to stay just where I was.  They could see me, anyway, if they’d just look in the mirror.  So I didn’t feel that I was sneaking.  And I stayed.