Adam rose up and put his arms around his mother.  All his resentment was gone.  He was happy as he could be for his mother, and happier than he ever before had been for himself.

The following afternoon, Kate took the car and went to see Agatha instead of husking corn.  She dressed with care and arrived about three o’clock, leading Poll in whitest white, with cheeks still rosy from her afternoon nap.  Agatha was sitting up and delighted to see them.  She said they were the first of the family who had come to visit her, and she thought they had come because she was thinking of them.  Then she told Kate about her illness.  She said it dated from father Bates stroke, and the dreadful days immediately following, when Adam had completely lost self-control, and she had not been able to influence him.  “I think it broke my heart,” she said simply.  Then they talked the family over, and at last Agatha said:  “Kate, what is this I hear about Robert?  Have you been informed that Mrs. Southey is back in Hartley, and that she is working every possible chance and using multifarious blandishments on him?”

Kate laughed heartily and suddenly.  She never had heard “blandishments” used in common conversation.  As she struggled to regain self-possession Agatha spoke again.

“It’s no laughing matter,” she said.  “The report has every ear-mark of verisimilitude.  The Bates family has a way of feeling deeply.  We all loved Nancy Ellen.  We all suffered severely and lost something that never could be replaced when she went.  Of course all of us realized that Robert would enter the bonds of matrimony again; none of us would have objected, even if he remarried soon; but all of us do object to his marrying a woman who would have broken Nancy Ellen’s heart if she could; and yesterday I took advantage of my illness, and told him so.  Then I asked him why a man of his standing and ability in this community didn’t frustrate that unprincipled creature’s vermiculations toward him, by marrying you, at once.”

Slowly Kate sank down in her chair.  Her face whitened and then grew greenish.  She breathed with difficulty.

“Oh, Agatha!” was all she could say.

“I do not regret it,” said Agatha.  “If he is going to ruin himself, he is not going to do it without knowing that the Bates family highly disapprove of his course.”

“But why drag me in?” said Kate, almost too shocked to speak at all.  “Maybe he loves Mrs. Southey.  She has let him see how she feels about him; possibly he feels the same about her.”

“He does, if he weds her,” said Agatha, conclusively.  “Anything any one could say or do would have no effect, if he had centred his affections upon her, of that you may be very sure.”

“May I?” asked Kate, dully.

“Indeed, you may!” said Agatha.  “The male of the species, when he is a man of Robert’s attainments and calibre, can be swerved from pursuit of the female he covets, by nothing save extinction.”