But some restraint dissuaded her from bridging that reserve.  She may have had the feeling that she spared him a good deal by her not knowing.

For more than a year after his return he had kept aloof from society—­going into town only when business demanded, and accepting no invitations to the gayeties of the neighborhood.  He liked rather to have his friends come out to stay with him:  sometimes he was off with them for days during the fishing and hunting seasons.  Care of the farm and its stock occupied a good deal of his leisure, and there were times when he worked hard in the fields—­she thought so unnecessarily.  Incessant activity of some kind had become his craving—­the only ease.

She became uneasy, she disapproved.  For a while she allowed things to have their way, but later she interfered—­though as always with her silent strength and irresistible gentleness.  Making no comment upon his changed habits and altered tastes, giving no sign of her own purposes, she began the second year of his home-coming to accept invitations for herself and formally reentered her social world; reassumed her own leadership there; demanded him as her escort; often filled the house with young guests; made it for his generation what the home of her girlhood had been to her—­in all sacrificing for him the gravity and love of seclusion which had settled over her during the solemn years, years which she knew to be parts of a still more solemn future.

She succeeded.  She saw him again more nearly what he had been before the college days—­more nearly developing that type of life which belonged to him and to his position.

Finally she saw him in love as she wished; and at this point she gradually withdrew from society again, feeling that he needed her no more.

VI

The noise of wheels on the gravel driveway of the lawn brought the reflections of Mrs. Meredith to an abrupt close.  The sound was extremely unpleasant to her; she did not feel in a mood to entertain callers this morning.  Rising with regret, she looked out.  The brougham of Mrs. Conyers, flashing in the sun, was being driven toward the house—­was being driven rapidly, as though speed meant an urgency.

If Mrs. Meredith desired no visitor at all, she particularly disliked the appearance of this one.  Rowan’s words to her were full of meaning that she did not understand; but they rendered it clear at least that his love affair had been interrupted, if not been ended.  She could not believe this due to any fault of his; and friendly relations with the Conyers family was for her instantly at an end with any wrong done to him.

She summoned a maid and instructed her regarding the room in which the visitor was to be received (not in the parlors; they were too full of solemn memories this morning).  Then she passed down the long hall to her bedchamber.

The intimacy between these ladies was susceptible of exact analysis; every element comprising it could have been valued as upon a quantitative scale.  It did not involve any of those incalculable forces which constitute friendship—­a noble mystery remaining forever beyond unravelling.