ery: "If you mean that I have ever attempted
to interfere----"

"No, no: but when they pervert things so damnably----"

"John!"

He dropped into his chair again, and pushed the hair from his forehead
with a groan.

"Well, then--put it that they have as much right to their view as I
have: I only want you to see what it is. Whenever I try to do anything
at Westmore--to give a real start to the work that Bessy and I planned
together--some pretext is found to stop it: to pack us off to the ends
of the earth, to cry out against reducing her income, to encourage her
in some new extravagance to which the work at the mills must be
sacrificed!"

Mrs. Amherst, growing pale under this outbreak, assured herself by a
nervous backward glance that their privacy was still uninvaded; then her
eyes returned to her son's face.

"John--are you sure you're not sacrificing your wife to the mills?"

He grew pale in turn, and they looked at each other for a moment without
speaking.

"You see it as they do, then?" he rejoined with a discouraged sigh.

"I see it as any old woman would, who had my experiences to look back
to."

"Mother!" he exclaimed.

She smiled composedly. "Do you think I mean that as a reproach? That's
because men will never understand women--least of all, sons their
mothers. No real mother wants to come first; she puts her son's career
ahead of everything. But it's different with a wife--and a wife as much
in love as Bessy."

Amherst looked away. "I should have thought that was a reason----"

"That would reconcile her to being set aside, to counting only second in
your plans?"

"They were _her_ plans when we married!"

"Ah, my dear--!" She paused on that, letting her shrewd old glance, and
all the delicate lines of experience in her face, supply what farther
comment the ineptitude of his argument invited.

He took the full measure of her meaning, receiving it in a baffled
silence that continued as she rose and gathered her lace mantle about
her, as if to signify that their confidences could not, on such an
occasion, be farther prolonged without singularity. Then he stood up
also and joined her, resting his hand on hers while she leaned on the
verandah rail.

"Poor mother! And I've kept you to myself all this time, and spoiled
your good afternoon."

"No, dear; I was a little tired, and had slipped away to be quiet." She
paused, and then went on, persuasively giving back his pressure: "I know
how you f