Carlisle raised her eyes. "Is that what you want me to do, mamma?"
"It is not a question of what I want in this house any longer, it seems.... I am pointing out to you, Carlisle, that the independence of action you have lately taken upon yourself is a serious matter, to be looked at from more than one side. It is not becoming," said Mrs. Heth, watching her daughter's face closely, "to bite the hand that feeds you."
To this the girl had no reply. Beneath her mother's somewhat vivid metaphor, she perceived a truth, and that truth the tragic weakness of her position. But she did not know now that large books had been written about this weakness, and many more would be....
Mrs. Heth having allowed the silence to continue a moment, educationally, drew a handkerchief across her upper lip, with its strange little downy mustache, and resumed:
"With no plans of your own, you have lately thrown away the best opportunity you will ever have in your life. Now there are only two theories on which I can explain this conduct--so totally unlike your usual good sense. One is that you have permitted yourself, without my knowledge, to become interested in somebody else.... Have you?"
"No--oh, no!... No, of course not."
"That I felt confident of," said mamma, though not without a certain note of relief. "Confident.... Yet--to touch the second point,--as you look toward the future, you do expect to marry some day, do you not?"
The daughter seemed restive under this cross-examination. She turned away from the maternal scrutiny, and, resting her arm upon her chair-back, looked toward the shaded window.
"Yes--I suppose so.... That seems to be all I'm fit for.... But--since you ask me, mamma--I would like, in the meantime, not to be so ... so plainly labelled waiting.... I'd like," she said, hesitatingly, "to have one man I meet--see me in some other light than as a candidate for matrimony."
"That," said Mrs. Heth, firmly, "will never be, so long as you retain your youth and beauty, and men retain their nature....