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“Which side was I on when we talked about them last?”

“Oh, when did we talk about them last? We are always talking about them! I am getting no good of the summer at all. I shall go home in the fall more jaded and worn out than when I came. To think that we should have this beautiful place, where we could be so happy and comfortable, if it were not for having this abnormal situation under our nose and eyes all the time!”

“Abnormal? I don’t call it abnormal,” I began, and I was sensible of my wife’s thoughts leaving her own injuries for my point of view so swiftly that I could almost hear them whir.

“Not abnormal!” she gasped.

“No; only too natural. Isn’t it perfectly natural for an invalid like that to want to keep her daughter with her; and isn’t it perfectly natural for a daughter, with a New England sense of duty, to yield to her wish? You might say that she could get married and live at home, and then she and Glendenning could both devote themselves–“

“No, no,” my wife broke in, “that wouldn’t do. Marriage is marriage; and it puts the husband and wife with each other first; when it doesn’t, it’s a miserable mockery.”

“Even when there’s a sick mother in the case?”

“A thousand sick mothers wouldn’t alter the case. And that’s what they all three instinctively know, and they’re doing the only thing they can do.”

“Then I don’t see what we’re complaining of.”

“Complaining of? We’re complaining of its being all wrong and–romantic. Her mother has asked more than she had any right to ask, and Miss Bentley has tried to do more than she can perform, and that has made them hate each other.”

“Should you say hate, quite?”

“It must come to that, if Mrs. Bentley lives.”

“Then let us hope she–“

“My dear!” cried Mrs. March, warningly.

“Oh, come, now!” I retorted. “Do you mean to say that you haven’t thought how very much it would simplify the situation if–“

“Of course I have! And that is the wicked part of it. It’s that that is wearing me out. It’s perfectly hideous!”

“Well, fortunately we’re not actively concerned in the affair, and we needn’t take any measures in regard to it. We are mere spectators, and as I see it the situation is not only inevitable for Mrs. Bentley, but it has a sort of heroic propriety for Miss Bentley.”

“And Glendenning?”

“Oh, Glendenning isn’t provided for in my scheme.”

“Then I can tell you that your scheme, Basil, is worse than worthless.”

“I didn’t brag of it, my dear,” I said, meekly enough. “I’m sorry for him, but I can’t help him. He must provide for himself out of his religion.”

IX.

It was, indeed, a trying summer for our emotions, torn as we were between our pity for Mrs. Bentley and our compassion for her daughter. We had no repose, except when we centred our sympathies upon Glendenning, whom we could yearn over in tender regret without doing any one else wrong, or even criticising another. He was our great stay in that respect, and though a mere external witness might have thought that he had the easiest part, we who knew his gentle and affectionate nature could not but feel for him. We never concealed from ourselves certain foibles of his; I have hinted at one, and we should have liked it better if he had not been so sensible of the honor, from a worldly point, of being engaged to Miss Bentley. But this was a very innocent vanity, and he would have been willing to suffer for her mother and for herself, if she had let him. I have tried to insinuate how she would not let him, but freed him as much as possible from the stress of the situation, and assumed for him a mastery, a primacy, which he would never have assumed for himself. We thought this very pretty of her, and in fact she was capable of pretty things. What was hard and arrogant in her, and she was not without something of the kind at times, was like her mother; but even she, poor soul, had her good points, as I have attempted to suggest. We used to dwell upon them, when our talk with Glendenning grew confidential, as it was apt to do; for it seemed to console him to realize that her daughter and he were making their sacrifice to a not wholly unamiable person.