“Dear Charlie,” said Miss Lance, “all this, you know, is very great nonsense--between you and me; I have told you so all along. Now things have really become too serious to go on. I want to be kind to you, to help you to get well, and to see as much of you as possible; for you are a dear boy and I am fond of you. But this can’t be unless you will see things in their true light and acknowledge the real state of affairs. I am most willing and ready to be your friend, to be a mother to you. But anything else is ridiculous. Do you hear me, Charlie?--ridiculous! You don’t want to be laughed at, and you don’t want me to be laughed at, I suppose?” She took his hands with which he had covered his face and held them in hers. “Now, no nonsense, Charlie. Be a man! Will you have me for your friend, always ready to do anything for you, or will you have nothing to do with me? Come! I might be your mother, I have always told you so. And look here,” she said, with a tone of genuine passion in her voice and a half turn of her flexible figure towards the two girls, “I’m worth having for a mother; whatever you may think in your cruel youth, I am, I am!” Surely this was to them and not to him. The movement, the accent, was momentary. Her voice changed again into the softness of a caress. “Charlie, my dear boy, don’t make me ridiculous, don’t make people laugh at me. They call me an old witch, trying to entrap a young man. Will you let people--nay, will you _make_ people call me so?” “_I_ make anyone call you--anything but what you are!” he cried. “Nobody would dare,” said the unfortunate fellow, “to do anything but revere you and admire you so long as I was there.” “And then break out laughing the moment your back was turned,” she said. “‘What a hold the old hag has got upon him!’ is what they would say. And it would be quite true. Not that I am an old hag. No, I don’t think I am that, I am worse. I’m a very well preserved woman of my years. I’ve taken great care of myself to keep up what are called my personal advantages. I have never wished--I don’t wish now--to be thought older than I am, or ugly. I am just old enough--to be your mother, Charlie, if I had married young, as your mother did----” He drew his hands out of her cool and firm grasp, and once more covered his face with them. “Don’t torture me,” he cried. “No, my dear boy, I don’t want to torture you, but you must not make me, nor yourself--whom I am proud of--ridiculous. I am going probably--for nothing is certain till it happens,” she said, with a mournful tone in her voice, slightly shaking her head, “and you may perhaps help to balk me--I am probably going to make a match with a reasonable person suited to my age.” Poor Charlie started up, his hands fell from his face, his large miserable eyes were fixed upon hers. “And you come--you come--to tell me this!” he cried.