“Quite a beauty; she is a perfect beauty,” said his mother with emphasis.  “It seemed to me I never had seen such a perfectly beautiful, sweet girl.  I declare, I actually wanted to take her in my arms.  Anybody could live with that girl.  As for her sister, I don’t like her at all.”

Mrs. Lee was very like her son.  She had the same square jaw and handsome face, which had little of the truly feminine in it.  Her clear blue eyes surveyed every new person with whom she came in contact in her new dwelling place, with impartial and pitiless scrutiny.  When she liked people she said so.  When she did not she also said so, and, as far as she could, let them alone.  When she spoke now, she looked as if Maria’s face was actually before her.  She did not frown, but her expression was one of complete hostility and unsparing judgment.

“Why don’t you like her?” asked her son, with his eyes upon his paper.

“Why don’t I like her?  She is New England to the backbone, and one who is New England to the backbone is insufferable.  She is stiff and set in her ways.  She would go to the stake for a fad, or send her nearest and dearest there.”

“She is a very good teacher, and the pupils like her,” said Wollaston.  He kept his voice quite steady.

“She may be a very good teacher,” said his mother.  “I dare say she is.  I can’t imagine anybody not learning a task which she set them, but I don’t like her.”

“She is pretty—­at least, she is called so,” said Wollaston.  Then he added, with an impulse of loyalty:  “I think myself that she is very pretty.”

“I don’t call her at all pretty,” said his mother.  “She has a nose which looks as if it could pierce fate, and she sets her mouth as though she was deciding the laws of the universe.  It is all very well in a man, that kind of a face, but I can’t call it pretty in a woman.”

Wollaston glanced at his mother, and an expression of covert amusement was on his face as he reflected that his mother herself answered her own description of poor Maria, and did not dream of it.  In fact, the two, although one was partly of New England heritage, and the other of a wholly different, more southern State, they were typically alike.  They could meet only to love or quarrel; there could never be neutrality between them.  Wollaston said no more, but continued reading his paper.  He did not in reality sense one word which he read.  He acknowledged to himself that he was very unhappy.  He was caught in a labyrinth from which he saw no way of escape into the open.  He realized that love for Maria had become almost impossible—­that is, spontaneous love—­even if she should change her attitude towards him.  He realized a lurking sense of guilt as to his sentiments towards Evelyn, and he realized also that his mother and Maria could never live together in peace.  Once Mrs. Lee took a dislike, her very soul fastened upon it as with a grip of iron jaws.  Doubtless if she knew that her son was in honor bound to Maria she would try to make the best of it, but the best of it would be bad enough.  He wondered while he sat with the paper before his face what Maria’s real attitude towards him was.  He could not understand such apparent inconsistencies in a woman of his mother’s type, and he had been almost sure that one night that Maria loved him.