"I'll try," she said. "I expect I know something about it."
"I don't think you can know much, my dear. It will be a good many years yet before you have to face the fact that you're getting old."
She laughed lightly. "If that's what's the matter with you," she said, "I can sweep the trouble away altogether. You've always seemed to me about as young as any of us, and you'll go on being young till you die. It isn't a question of years. I thought it was the reaction of the last few months."
"Well, I suppose it is. But what do you mean by that?"
"I think you've behaved most awfully well," she said. "I've admired you very much for it, and I'm glad I can say so."
"Oh, you mean about accepting Maurice. But that's all over long ago. It was a bit difficult at first, but it hasn't been difficult lately. No, it isn't that, except that the late performance hasn't cheered me up exactly. I think I should feel just the same if Caroline had married somebody that all the world would have accepted as suited to her. It has brought my life as I've lived it to an end. That's what's the matter with me, Ella. I've got to rearrange it for myself, and it's rather a bleak prospect."
"Tell me about it," she said. "I don't quite see."
"Well, I suppose most men of my sort, who have work that suits them, and enough money to get all the pleasures they want, are more or less content with that when they get to my age, even if their children mean a good deal to them. But I'm not. Family life has been the best thing I've had, and I don't know what I shall do without it."
"You haven't lost them all, have you? And when you come down here you'll have Caroline almost as much as before."
"Ah, but it won't be the same. That came simply rushing over me as she drove away. She's been the dearest daughter to me. She's centred herself on me. I suppose she's made me selfish. She's given me all that she could of what her mother would have given me. I've never valued her half enough. I think I loved B better than her when they were both children. Not much better, but perhaps enough to make her feel the difference. That's rather a bad memory just now. I may have done it in ways that I haven't meant to, that may have hurt her."