“You think I spoil her?”
“Sometimes.”
Delia felt an unreasoning resentment. “What was it I said that you object to?”
Charlotte returned her glance steadily. “I would rather she thought me an old maid than—”
“Oh—” Delia murmured. With one of her quick leaps of intuition she had entered into the other’s soul, and once more measured its shuddering loneliness.
“What else,” Charlotte inexorably pursued, “can she possibly be allowed to think me—ever?”
“I see ... I see ...” the widow faltered.
“A ridiculous narrow-minded old maid—nothing else,” Charlotte Lovell insisted, getting to her feet, “or I shall never feel safe with her.”
“Goodnight, my dear,” Delia said compassionately. There were moments when she almost hated Charlotte for being Tina’s mother, and others, such as this, when her heart was wrung by the tragic spectacle of that unavowed bond.
Charlotte seemed to have divined her thought.