You must help him all you can, my boy, and Gabriella and I will manage with each other's company." Her bright smile was still on her lips, but Gabriella noticed that she pushed her buttered roll away as if she were choking.
In the early afternoon, when George had gone to join his father in the office, and Gabriella, seated at a little white and gold desk in the room which had been Patty's, was just finishing a letter to her mother, Mrs.Fowler came in, and pushing a chintz-covered chair close to the desk, sank into it and laid her small nervous hand on the arm of her daughter-in-law.

She was wearing a velvet bonnet, with strings, and a street gown of black broadcloth, which fitted her like a glove and accentuated, after the fashion of the 'nineties, her small, compact waist and the deep substantial curves of her bosom and hips.

Her eyes, behind the little veil of spotted tulle which reached to the tip of her nose, were bright and wistful, and though her colour was too high, a smile of troubled sweetness lent it a peculiar charm of expression.
"How nice you look, my dear," she said, with her pleasant manner, which no anxiety, hardly any grief, could dispel.

"Are you very busy, or may I talk to you a little while ?" Drawing closer to her, Gabriella raised the plump little hand to her lips.

Beneath the surface pleasantness of Mrs.Fowler's life--that pleasantness which wrapped her like a religion--she was beginning to discern a deep disquietude.
"I want to talk to you, mamma," she said, and her manner was a caress.
"You love George very much, dear ?" asked Mrs.Fowler so suddenly that Gabriella looked at her startled.
For a minute the girl could not speak.