I could never make out on my mother's part, whether she was really afraid of the issue, or if in the preoccupation of their affection both she and Forester had overlooked his young man's right to a woman and a life of his own. Through all her dumb struggle against it, never but once did my mother openly face the ultimate possibility of his marriage with Lily Jastrow. It was about the third week of her illness, and Mrs. Jastrow, making one of her interminable calls, had been brought so nearly to the point of tears by my imperiousness, that Effie had been obliged to draw her off into the kitchen to have her opinion about a recipe for a mince meat such as she knew the Jastrows couldn't afford to be instructed in, and so had gotten her out of the side door and started down the walk before the situation could come to a head. My mother watched her go. "Do you think," she hazarded suddenly, "that Forester really is engaged to her?" "To Lily? Oh, no; Forester doesn't get engaged to girls, he just--dangles." It was characteristic of my mother's partiality that even damaging insinuations such as this, slid off from it as too far from the possibility to be even entertained. Perhaps a trace of my old exasperation with the whole situation, and the glimpse I had of Mrs. Jastrow letting herself out of our gate with her assumption of being as good as anybody still to the fore but a little awry, prompted me to add: "And it is only natural for her mother to make the most of it. She's looking out for her own, just as you are." "A mother has a right to do that;" she protested, "to keep them from making themselves miserable. It is no more than her duty." "Yes," I said; the remark had the effect of a challenge. "Young people don't know how to choose for themselves; they make mistakes." She revolved something in her mind. "You, now ... you're unhappy, aren't you, Olivia?" "Yes; oh, yes." I had not thought of myself as being so particularly, but I did not see my way to deny it. "I've been afraid ... sometimes ... since you wrote me about going on the stage, maybe you weren't exactly ... satisfied. But it isn't that, is it?" "No, mother, it isn't that." "There! You see!" She shook off her weakness with the conviction. "And you mightn't have been if I hadn't looked out for you a little." "Why, mother, what could you possibly----" She triumphed. "You remember that Garrett boy that was visiting at his uncle's? He called that night; the night you were engaged to Tommy." "Yes, I remember. You sent him away?" "He wasn't suitable at all ... smoking, and driving about on Sunday that way...." Her tone was defensive. "He left a letter that night----" "Mother! You didn't tell me!" "I was thinking it over ... I had a right ... you were too young!" "Mother ... did you read it?" "I ... looked at it. You hadn't met him but once and I had a right to know; and that night you were engaged. I took it for a sign."