"I hope you didn't encourage him, Janet." "I don't wish to talk of it, mother," was Janet's reply.

"I have not been well, and all this has upset me." Mrs.Whitney was gnawing her palms with her nails and her lip with her teeth.

She could scarcely restrain herself from seizing her daughter and shaking the truth, whatever it was, out of her.

But prudence and respect for her daughter's delicate soul restrained her.
"You have made it doubly hard for me," Janet went on.

"Your writing me to stay away because there was doubt about Arthur's material future--oh, mother, how could that make any difference?
If I had not been feeling so done, and if father hadn't been looking to me to keep him company, I'd surely have gone.