Forman I
recognised that she was the inevitable mother of such a daughter, and
that Nature's combination was more harmonious than mine. The first
thing that struck me was that the personal energy I had missed in the
daughter survived in the mother, notwithstanding her seventy-five
years. The daughter reminded me now of a tree that had been
overshadowed; Miss Forman had remained a child, nor could she have
grown to womanhood unless somebody had taken her away; no doubt
somebody had wanted to marry her; there is nobody that has not had her
love affair, very few at least, and I imagined Miss Forman giving up
hers for the sake of her mamma, and I could hear her mamma--that
short, thick woman, looking more like a ball of lard than anything
else in the world, alert notwithstanding her sciatica, with two small
beady eyes in the glaring whiteness of her face--forgetful of her
daughter's sacrifice, saying to her some evening as they warmed their
shins over the fire:
"Well, Caroline, I never understood how it was that you didn't marry
Mr. So-and-so, I think he would have suited you very well."
My interest in these two women who had lived side by side all their
lives was slight; it was just animated by a slight curiosity to see if
Miss Forman would be as much interested in her mother in her own house
by her mother's side as she had been in the hotel among strangers.
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