Her own ideal of what even a young man should be was as unpractical as that of many thoroughly good and thoroughly unworldly mothers.

She wished her son to be a man at all points, and yet she dreamed that he might remain a sort of glorified young girl; she desired him to be well prepared to face the world when he grew up, and yet it was her dearest wish that he might never know anything of the world's wickedness.

Corbario seemed to understand her better in this than she understood herself, and devoted his excellent gifts and his almost superhuman patience to the task of forming a modern Galahad.

Her confidence in her husband increased month by month, and year by year.
"I wish to make a new will," she said to her lawyer in the third year of her marriage.

"I shall leave my husband a life-interest in a part of my fortune, and the reversion of the whole in case anything should happen to my son." The lawyer was a middle-aged man, with hard black eyes.