window and looking out silently for some moments, Imogen, without turning,
said, "It's not a friendship I care about."

"Why not?" Jack asked, taken aback.

"I don't like it," Imogen repeated.

"Why under the sun should you dislike it? What do you know about it,
anyway?"

Imogen still gazed from the window. "Jack, I don't believe that mama is at
all the woman to have friends, as we understand the word. I don't believe
that it is simply a friendship. Yes, you may well look surprised,"--she
had turned to him now--"I've never told you. It seemed unfair to her. But
again and again I've caught her whispers, hints, about the sentimental
attachments mama inspires. You may imagine how I've felt, living here with
_him_, in his loneliness. I don't say, I don't believe, that mama was ever
a flirt; she is too dignified, too distinguished a woman for that; but the
fact remains that whispers of this sort do attach themselves to her name,
and a woman is always to blame, in some sense, for that."

Jack, looking as startled as she had hoped he would, gazed now with
frowning intentness on the ground and made no reply.

"As for this Sir Basil," Imogen went on, "I used to wonder if he were
another of these triflers with the sanctity of love, and of late I've
wondered more. He writes to her constantly. What can the bond between mama
and a man of that type be unless it's a sentimental one? And didn't you see
her blush to-day?"