“There is nothing we can do but make her as comfortable and care free as possible while she is with us. I didn’t tell you before because she didn’t want you to know about it until after Charlotte’s wedding, and she doesn’t want Charlotte to know it at all. She wants everything to be as cheerful and happy as possible while Charlotte is here. Please don’t let her guess that you know.” Charlotte was to be married in May, and during the remaining weeks of that time Rhoda watched her mother with anxious and loving care, taking upon herself, as Mrs. Ware seemed willing to relinquish it, every household responsibility, and noted with aching heart the wasting of her face and figure. “I believe she is just keeping up by her will power,” Rhoda said to Dr. Ware, “so that there shall be nothing to make Charlotte unhappy during her last weeks at home.” “Yes,” assented her father, “she wants Charlotte to remember the months of her engagement as the happiest time in her life. We must be prepared for a reaction after it is all over.” After Rhoda’s trial and imprisonment no mention of that matter was ever made between her and her mother. When she returned home Mrs. Ware received her with the utmost love and tenderness, but without the least reference to the reasons for her absence. In neither words nor manner did she recognize that that absence had been anything other than an ordinary social visit and if it had to be spoken of she referred to it merely as the time “when you were away.” So, now, she made no sign to either her husband or her daughter that she had any knowledge of the Underground activities in which they were engaged or of the fugitive slaves who were sheltered in the house. Rhoda was never able to guess whether she knew much or little of what went on under her roof nor whether or not she resented it or was grieved by it. But the girl’s heart ached constantly with sympathy for what she felt must be her mother’s pain. Her compassion and sorrow, however, did not lead her to consider for a moment the idea of giving up the work. Rather, they inspired her to greater zeal, in both thought and action, and to more intense desire to aid in the destruction of slavery. For, in her mind, whatever grief her mother felt, whatever alienation there was between them, were among the evil results of the slave system, just as was the division between her and Jefferson Delavan, and the only way of rightfully fully meeting them was to attack their cause.