Perhaps that is her inconsistency:  women are sure to be inconsistent somewhere:  it is their birthright.

I began to study her at once, to find you:  it did not take long.  How I could love her, if she would let me!

You know her far far better than I, and want no advice:  otherwise I would say—­never praise me to her; quote my follies rather!  To give ground for her distaste to revel in will not deepen me in her bad books so much as attempts to warp her judgment.

I need not go through it all:  she will have told you all that is to the purpose about our meeting.  She bristled in, a brave old fighting figure, announcing compulsion in every line, but with all her colors flying.  She waited for the door to close, then said, “My son has bidden me come, I suppose it is my duty:  he is his own master now.”

We only shook hands.  Our talk was very little of you.  I showed her all the horses, the dogs, and the poultry; she let the inspection appear to conclude with myself:  asked me my habits, and said I looked healthy.  I owned I felt it.  “Looks and feelings are the most deceptive things in the world,” she told me; adding that “poor stock” got more than its share of these.  And when she said it I saw quite plainly that she meant me.

I wonder where she gets the notion:  for we are a long-lived race, both sides of the family.  I guessed that she would like frankness, and was as frank as I could be, pretending no deference to her objections.  “You think you suit each other?” she asked me.  My answer, “He suits me!” pleased her maternal palate, I think.  “Any girl might say that!” she admitted. (She might indeed!)

This is the part of our interview she will not have repeated to you.

I was due at Hillyn when she was preparing to go:  Aunt N——­ came in, and I left her to do the honors while I slipped on my habit.  I rode by your mother’s carriage as far as the Greenway, where we branched.  I suppose that is what her phrase means that you quote about my “making a trophy of her,” and marching her a prisoner across the borders before all the world!

I do like her:  she is worth winning.—­Can one say warmer of a future mother-in-law who stands hostile?

All the same it was an ordeal.  I believe I have wept since:  for Benjy scratched my door often yesterday evening, and looked most wistful when I came out.  Merely paltry self-love, dearest:—­I am so little accustomed to not being—­liked.

I think she will be more gracious in her own house.  I have her formal word that I am to come.  Soon, not too soon, I will come over; and you shall meet me and take me to see her.  There is something in her opposition that I can’t fathom:  I wondered twice was lunacy her notion:  she looked at me so hard.

My mother’s seclusion and living apart from us was not on that account.  I often saw her:  she was very dear and sweet to me, and had quiet eyes the very reverse of a person mentally deranged.  My father, I know, went to visit her when she lay dying; and I remember we all wore mourning.  My uncle has told me they had a deep regard for each other:  but disagreed, and were independent enough to choose living apart.