"A guest in her own room? That is unusual for mother, isn't it? Who was it?"
"How should I know? I wasn't enlightened. When I reached home soon after luncheon, I asked Nannie who had been here, and among others she mentioned a young lady who had asked very particularly to see 'Madame Burnham,' and said that after a while she took the lady to her own sitting room, and she was there yet. She left but a few minutes before you came, a very stylish-looking person, indeed, and quite young. It is fortunate that she did not stay for dinner, as I supposed she would, having spent the day, or I might have been seized with a fit of jealousy."
"Did you say my mother looked worn? Were you in her room?"
"No, indeed! I did not presume; I all but ran against her in the hall, and thought she looked older than usual."
"She may have had some unpleasant news; I think I will run up and see her."
"Don't, Erskine! I am sure you annoy your mother by such watchfulness. Old people don't like that sort of care, it seems to them like spying upon their movements; they want a chance to do as they please. I found that out from auntie; she seemed really annoyed when I questioned her about her movements. She wanted to be left to come to her dinner, or stay away, as she pleased; and your mother is just like her."
Erskine opened his lips to speak, then closed them again. He was on the verge of saying that he could not think of two people more unlike than his mother and her aunt; then it occurred to him that to make a remark so manifestly in favor of his own relative would hardly be courteous. Of course Irene thought of her aunt much as he did of his mother, and besides, the aunt was gone.
But he did not go up to his mother. It is true that he told his wife, presently, that he could not think for a moment that his care of and solicitude for his mother would ever look to her like espionage; they understood each other too well for that; but he spoke in a troubled tone. Despite this perfect understanding, his wife's constancy to the belief that his mother was growing old, and more or less feeble, and whimsical, as she believed old people always did, was having its effect upon him; he was beginning to feel at times that perhaps he did not understand his mother, after all.