And I went cheerfully away to Palm Beach, there to watch at my ease the rain of shot and shell upon my enemy.
XXVII
A DOMESTIC DISCORD
After a month in the South, I was well again—younger in feeling, and in looks, than I had been for ten years. Carlotta and the children, except "Junior" who was in college, had gone to Washington when I went to Florida. I found her abed with a nervous attack from the double strain of the knowledge that Junior had eloped with an "impossible" woman he had met, I shall not say where, and of the effort of keeping the calamity from me until she was sure he had really entangled himself hopelessly.
She was now sitting among her pillows, telling the whole story. "If he only hadn't married her!" she ended.
This struck me as ludicrous—a good woman citing to her son's discredit the fact that he had goodness' own ideals of honor.
"What are you laughing at?" she demanded.
I was about to tell her I was hopeful of the boy chiefly because he had thus shown the splendid courage that more than redeems folly. But I refrained. I had never been able to make Carlotta understand me or my ideas, and I had long been weary of the resentful silences or angry tirades which mental and temperamental misunderstandings produce.