I am sure that if Mother could have known George as I have known him, she would have cared for him. She has hardly seen him in all these years. She hopes that I will forget, but I should be poorer if I could. One does not leave off loving just because circumstances alter. He is free to go his way, but that does not make me any the less his if there is any virtue in my being so.
February 8. I met Mrs. Webbe in the street to-day, her black eyes brighter, more piercing, more snapping than ever. She came up to me in her quick, jerky way, stopped suddenly, tall and strong, and looked at me as if she were trying to read some profound secret, hid in the very bottom of my soul. I could never by any possibility be half so mysterious as Mrs. Webbe's looks seemed to make me.
"Do you write to Tom?" she demanded.
"I don't even know where he is," I answered.
"Then you don't write to him?"
"No."
"That's a pity," Mrs. Webbe went on, her eyes piercing me so that they almost gave me a sensation of physical discomfort. "He ought to know."
I looked at her a moment in silence, thinking she might explain her enigmatic words.
"To know what?" I asked at length.