were."

"Oh, she could easily imitate two manners. She must have been a clever
girl," Mrs. Verrian said, with that admiration for any sort of cleverness
in her sex which even very good women cannot help feeling.

"Well, perhaps she was punished enough for both the characters she
assumed," Verrian said, with a smile that was not gay.

"Don't think about her!" his mother returned, with a perception of his
mood. "I'm only thankful that she's out of our lives in every sort of
way."




VI.

Verrian said nothing, but he reflected with a sort of gloomy amusement
how impossible it was for any woman, even a woman so wide-minded and
high-principled as his mother, to escape the personal view of all things
and all persons which women take. He tacitly noted the fact, as the
novelist notes whatever happens or appears to him, but he let the
occasion drop out of his mind as soon as he could after it had dropped
out of his talk.

The night when the last number of his story came to them in the magazine,
and was already announced as a book, he sat up with his mother
celebrating, as he said, and exulting in the future as well as the past.
They had a little supper, which she cooked for him in a chafing-dish, in