agine 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.

Chapter XXXV

Maria, after that call, faced her future course more fully than ever.
She had disliked Mrs. Lee as much as Mrs. Lee had disliked her. Only
the fact that she was Wollaston's mother made her endurable to her.

"Isn't Mrs. Lee perfectly lovely?" said Evelyn, when she and Maria
were on their way home.

"Yes," Maria answered, but she did not think so. Mrs. Lee shone for
her only with reflected glory.

"I wonder where Mr. Lee was?" Evelyn murmured, timidly.

"I don't know,"