"Then I'll tell you. My boy, I cannot understand why Miss Carrillo lives in the city alone and away from her parents."
He looked at her in amazement.
"Mother, surely you don't——" he began.
It was incomprehensible, unbelievable. If she had spoken against the name of his dead father John could not have been more startled than by this questioning in his mother's mind of Consuello.
"I don't think anything," she said, again stroking his head. "But, between you and me, John, there should be not even the slightest misunderstanding. That's why I have spoken to you like this. Probably, if she has not told you, you never thought to ask yourself that question. Perhaps I should not ask it, even to myself, but I am a mother and a woman and it's natural for us to doubt when it concerns one we love."
"You have no right to misjudge," he said.
"I don't misjudge, my boy; I only wait for your answer."
It flashed into his mind that he could not answer, could not tell her why Consuello lived in the city, but it did not cause him to waver. Consuello's words, "Why must we always impute a misconceived motive?" the question she had asked when they had discussed those who doubted Gibson's sincerity, and his answer, "Because deceit has its place in the human heart, I suppose," came back to him. He could not, however, imagine deceit in his mother's heart, and he knew that the seed of suspicion in her mind had been cultivated into an ugly weed of doubt by some one else. This thought calmed the indignation which was surging through him.
"Mother," he said, "I do not know why she lives alone in the city. She has never told me and I have never asked. I did not consider it my business. Not for a moment has a shadow of doubt entered my head. Can't you see—can't you tell by looking at her?
"She may be with friends. She may be studying. She may be working. Whatever she is doing, you nor I have no reason to let an evil thought about her stay with us for a moment."