compressed and controlled all sorts of agitating things. Her mother was
with her in the lamp-lit library and he guessed already that, in any case,
Imogen, before her mother, would rarely show gaiety and playfulness. Gaiety
and playfulness would seem to condone the fact that her mother found so
little need of help in "bearing" the burden of her regret and of her
self-reproach. But, allowing for that fact, Imogen's gravity was more than
negative. It confronted him like a solemn finger laid on firmly patient
lips; he felt it dwell upon him like solemn eyes while he shook hands with
Mrs. Upton, whom he had not seen since the morning of her arrival.

Mrs. Upton, too, was grave, after a fashion; but her whole demeanor might
be decidedly irritating to a consciousness so burdened with a sense of
change as Imogen 'a evidently was. Even before that finger, those eyes,
into which he had symbolized Imogen's manner, Mrs. Upton's gravity could
break into a smile quite undisturbed, apparently, by any inappropriateness.
She sat near the lamp crocheting; soft, white wool sliding through her
fingers and wave after wave of cloudy substance lengthening a tiny baby's
jacket, so very small a jacket that Jack surmised it to be a gift for an
expectant mother. He further surmised that Mrs. Upton would be very nice to
expectant mothers; that they would like to have her abound.

Mrs. Upton would not curb her smile on account of Imogen's manner, nor
would she recognize it to the extent of tacitly excluding her from the
conversation. She seemed, indeed, to pass him on, in all she said, to
Imogen, and Jack, once more, found his situation between them a little
difficult, for if Mrs. Upton passed him on, Imogen was in no hurry to
receive him. He had, once or twice, the sensation of being stranded, and
it was always Mrs. Upton who felt his need and who pushed him off into the
ease of fresh questions.