Page:A fountain sealed by Sedgwick, Anne Douglas.djvu/218

212 "I shall love being with you," he answered, now without a single inner reserve.

Her intentness seemed to soften, there was solicitude and a sort of persuasiveness in it. "And you will have a much better chance of really adjusting things there—your friendship with Imogen, I mean. The country smooths things out. Things get sweet and simple."

He did n't know what to say. Her mistake, if it were one, was so inevitable.

"Imogen will have taken her bearings by then," she went on. "She has had so much to get accustomed to, to bear with, poor child; her great bereavement, and and a mother who, in some ways, must always be a trial to her."

"Oh, a trial!"—Jack lamely murmured.

"I recognize it, Jack. I think that you do. But when she makes up her mind to me, and discovers that, at all events, I don t interfere with anything that she really cares about, she will be able to take up all her old threads again."

"I—I suppose so," Jack murmured.

He had dropped his eyes, for he knew that hers were on him. And now, in a lowered voice, he heard her say, "Jack, I hope that you will help me with Imogen."

"Help you? How do you mean?" startled, he looked up.

"You know. Interpret me to her now and then, when you can, with kindliness. You understand me so much more kindly than she does."

His eyes fixed on hers, deeply flushing—"Oh,