“What is the matter, Gabriella?  Have you a headache?”

“Oh, no, but the sunshine is so strong.”

“Then you’d better lower the shade.  Why, what in the world has happened to my rose geranium?  I was just going to pot it for the winter.”

“I’m sure it isn’t hurt, mother.  George broke the leaves when he was looking out of the window.”

“I thought he was going to stay for dinner.  Did you make the jelly and syllabub?”

“I made it, but he wouldn’t stay.”

“Well, we’ll send some upstairs to Miss Jemima.  Do you know she had to have the doctor this morning?  I met him as I was going out, and he said he was sorry to hear I was going to leave Richmond.  I can’t imagine where on earth he could have heard it, for I haven’t mentioned it to a soul except Lydia Peyton.  Yes, I believe I did speak of it to Bessie Spencer at the meeting of the Ladies’ Aid Society the other day.  Where are you going, Gabriella?  Would you mind putting my bonnet in the bandbox?”

No, Gabriella wouldn’t mind, and taking the folds of crape in her arms, she went to get the green paper bandbox out of the closet.  Though she had sacrificed her happiness for her mother, she felt that it would be impossible for her to listen with a smiling face to her innocent prattle.

In the afternoon, when Mrs. Carr, with a small and inconspicuous basket in her hand, had set out on her Sunday visit to the Old Ladies’ Home, and Marthy, attired in an apron with an embroidered bib, had taken the jelly and syllabub upstairs to Miss Jemima, Gabriella sat down in her mother’s rocking-chair by the window, and tried desperately to be philosophical.  The sound of the old maids from the floor above descending on their way to a funeral disturbed her for a minute, and she thought with an extraordinary clearness, “That is what my life will be if George never comes back.  That is what it means to be old.”  And there was a morbid pleasure in pressing this thought, like a pointed weapon, into her heart.  “That is all there will be for me—­that will be my life,” she went on after an instant of throbbing anguish.  “I had no right to think of marriage with mother dependent on me, and the best thing for me to do is to start again with Mr. Brandywine.  George was right in a way.  Yes, it is hard on him, and I was wrong ever to think of it—­ever to let him fall in love with me.”  The mere thought that George was right in a way gave her singular comfort, and while she dwelt on it, the discovery seemed to throw a vivid light on the cause of the quarrel.  Of course, she had expected too much of him.  It was natural that he should not want to be burdened with her family.  What she had looked upon as selfishness was only the natural instinct of a man in love with a woman.  He had said that he wanted her to himself, and to want her to himself appeared now to be the most reasonable desire in the world.

Yes, she had acquitted George; but, in acquitting him, it was characteristic of her that she should not have yielded an inch of her ground.  She drew comfort from declaring him innocent, but it was the tragic comfort of one who blesses while she renounces.  George’s blamelessness did not alter in the least her determination to cling to her mother.