“I got her usual quarterly page the other day. She seems well enough. I’ve been to Nevis since you left. Nerves got rackety, and the doctor told me to go where I’d really be quiet. I was! But I shouldn’t wonder if I went again some day. Never looked so well in my life as when I came back. Simply vegetated.”
“And how does my mother look? I cannot imagine her changed—but—it is a good many years!”
“She looks exactly the same. Ain’t you ever goin’ back?”
“Not until she sends for me. I can’t help feeling that she doesn’t want me,—prefers not to be actively reminded of the last and most tragic disappointment of her life. I sometimes wonder that she writes to me. Her letters are even briefer than those to you.”
“Perhaps you are right. She hasn’t forgiven you—or herself. I tried to tell her some of your charmin’ experiences with Harold,—there was so little to talk about, I thought it might be interestin’ to see how she took it,—but she wouldn’t listen!”
“Poor mother! What a life! I wonder if she would let me have Fanny?”
“Fanny?”
“Yes, I am quite alone, you know. I could do for her nicely, and it would almost be like having a child of my own.”
“I detest Fanny,” said Mrs. Winstone, with some show of human emotion. “She’s a minx. Jane will have her hands full three or four years from now.”
“She was such a dear little thing.”