Mrs. Ladue looked up quickly. "I can't tell, Sally," she replied. "I thought I did, and I spoke to Charlie about it, but he assured me that there was nothing wrong and that it must be all my imagination. I couldn't press the question. To tell the truth, I was afraid to. He seems to have no disposition to confide in me and to have a low opinion of my judgment, but I shouldn't like to have him say so. If--if you could speak to him--" "Very well," said Sally, sighing wearily, "I will, although I have no hope of accomplishing anything by it--except arousing his suspicion," she added with a short laugh, "if there is anything which worries him and which he is unwilling to tell. We are not in Charlie's confidence." "We have not been--_I_ have not been in his confidence for eleven years--since I was taken sick." Mrs. Ladue sighed in her turn. "He seems like a stranger. I haven't been able to get near him. But he seems to be rather afraid of your judgment, Sally." "That's not a great help," Sally remarked with another short laugh, "in getting near him, is it? But I'll try." Accordingly Sally asked him whether--she was careful to put the question in as natural a form as possible and she tried to make it seem casual, too--she asked him whether there was anything he would like to have them do for him. It is not likely that she succeeded thoroughly in either of these attempts, for Charlie only looked startled and answered that he didn't think there was anything. And he added that he was a little anxious about his reports. If they were not as good as they might be, he hoped that mother would not be too much disappointed. And Sally had shrugged a little and smiled a little and shown a little of the contempt which she always felt for lying. She did not know that Charlie was lying, but she felt that he was, and she could not have helped that little smile of contempt to save her life. But Charlie did not recognize her smile as one of contempt. He went off to see Patty, smiling and patting himself on the back for having thrown Sally off the scent so cleverly. It is not to be supposed that either Mrs. Ladue or Sally was so lacking in natural affection that she let Charlie go on the way he was going without a struggle--without several struggles. Not that they knew just the way he was going, but they knew very well that they had lost all their control over him; the control which is due to a mutual love. It was Charlie who had shown a lack of natural affection. His mother had struggled in vain against that lack and against the effect of Patty's indulgence. As for Sally, if the love and regard of ten or twelve years before, a love very like a mother's, had been changed insensibly into the tolerant contempt of the strong for the weak--not always perfectly tolerant, I am afraid--Charlie had only himself to blame. But, as for blaming himself--pfooh! Much he cared! CHAPTER XIV