He could not bring himself to be cordial to Thorne all at once, but he loyally tried to do his best, and Thorne was big enough to see and appreciate the effort.  There might come a time when the men would be friends.

Poor Mrs. Mason!  Her daughter’s engagement was a shock, almost a blow to her, and she could not reconcile herself to it at first.  The foundations seemed to be slipping from under her feet, the supports in which she trusted, to be falling away.  She was a just as well as a loving woman, and she knew that the presence of a new and powerful love brings new responsibilities and a new outlook on life.  She faithfully tried to put herself in her daughter’s place and to judge of the affair from Pocahontas’s standpoint; but the effort was painful to her, and the result not always what she could wish.  She recognized, the love being admitted, that Thorne had claims which must be allowed; but she felt it hard that such claims should exist, and her recognition of them was not sufficiently full and generous to make her feel at one with herself.  Old minds adapt themselves to new conditions slowly.

However, mother-love is limitless, and, through all, her impulse was to hold to her child, to do nothing, to say nothing which would wound or alienate her.  And for the rest—­there was no need of haste; she could keep these things and “ponder them in her heart.”