"Ah, that is it! Didn't I tell you before, that at the time I met your father I was in absolute despair?"
"You, mother? No."
"I did not believe that life had anything to offer, or that I had anything to wait for. Most girls who arrive at the age of twenty-eight without anything having happened to them, anything that is worth rousing themselves for, believe that nothing is worth caring about. The age, or about that age, is the most perilous."
"How do you mean?"
"That is when most girls come to despair."
She took her daughter's arm, which she pressed, and so they walked on together.
"I must confess it all to you"—but there she stopped.
"Who was it, mother?" She said it so softly that her mother didn't hear, but she knew what it was.
"It was some one for whom you have but small respect, my child. And you are right."
"My uncle?"