"I am afraid she is not to come at all, now."
"You're not going away?" the young man asked sharply, for her voice of sad acceptance implied something quite as sorrowful.
"Oh, no!" Imogen answered, "but mama does not feel that I can have my friend here now."
Jack, stranded indeed, looked his discomfort and, glancing at Mrs. Upton, he saw it echoed, though with, a veiled echo. She laid down her work; she looked at her daughter as though to probe the significance of her speech, and, not finding her clue, she sat rather helplessly silent.
"Well," said Jack, with attempted lightness, "I hope that I'm not exiled, too."
"Oh, Jack, how can you!" said Imogen. "It is only that we have discovered that we are very, very poor, and one's hospitable impulses are shackled. Mama has been so brave about it, and I don't want to put any burdens upon her, especially burdens that would be so uncongenial to her as dear, funny Mary. Mama could hardly care for that typical New England thing. Don't mind Jack, mama; he is such a near friend that I can talk quite frankly before him."
For Mrs. Upton was now gathering up her innocent work, preparatory, it was evident, to departure.
"You are not displeased, dear!" Imogen protested as she rose, not angry, not injured—Jack was trying to make it out—but full of a soft withdrawal. "Please don't go. I so want you and Jack to see something of each other."
"I will come back presently," said Mrs. Upton. And so she left them. Jack's thin face had flushed.
"She means that she won't talk quite frankly before you, you see," said Imogen. "Don't mind, dear Jack, she is full of these foolish little conventionalities; she cares so tremendously about the forms of things; I simply pay no attention; that's the best way. But it's quite true, Jack; I don't know that I can afford to have my friends come and stay with me any more. Apparently mama and papa, in their so different ways, have been very extravagant; and I, too, Jack, have been extravagant. I never knew that I mustn't be. The money was given to me as I asked for it—and there were so many, so many claims,—oh, I can't say that I'm sorry that it is gone as it went. 'But now that we are very poor, I want it to be my pleasures, rather than hers, that are cut off; she depends so upon her pleasures, her comforts. She depends more upon her maid, for instance, than I do even upon my friends. To go without Mary this winter will be hard, of course, but our love is founded on deeper things than seeing and speaking; and mama would feel it tragic, I'm quite sure, to have to do up her own hair."