“You are younger than Frederic,” she said. “Unless we do something to prevent it, your son will be an old man before he is thirty. Don't send him away now, James. Let me have him for a while. I mean it, dear. He is a lonely boy, and I know what it is to be lonely.”
“You?” he cried. “Why, you've never known anything but——”
“One can be lonely even in the heart of a throng,” she said cryptically. “No, James, I will not have him sent away.”
He resented the imputation. “Why do you say that I am sending him away?”
“Because you are,” she replied boldly.
He was silent for a moment. “We will leave it to Frederic,” he said.
Her face brightened. “That is all I ask. He will stay.”
There was another pause. “You two have become very good friends, Yvonne.”
“He is devoted to me.”
“Don't spoil him in making him over,” he said dryly.