She squinted in my direction. “My dear child, the pin money I give you wouldn’t go very far in one of those places. Mind you, I know all about them. They’re run by bloodsuckers and don’t be told anything different. Mrs. Eppington’s oldest daughter, who is named something remarkable like Margarine, though of course it isn’t that, married a Russian who went quite mad and was sent off to one of those fashionable bedlams at a ruinous cost that led her eventually to opening a little tea-room in Newport, where all you could get for love or money, was some horrid red soup and salads made of Bartlett pears. Not that the marriage wouldn’t have been absurd anyway. They had an apartment facing Washington Square, furnished as we don’t furnish apartments in Boston, with couches that became beds and a bar in a closet, and I believe he had an icon, though he wasn’t that sort of Russian. But I wander. No, Sonie, returns of that sort are not what I have in mind.”

I started to speak, to assure her that I would not leave her. But she held up her hand for silence.

“If I undertake to support your mother as well as yourself, I shall be doing it with no thought of being paid back. I must repeat—although I am sure you return my devotion—that this is, I know, not much of a life for a girl your age. You have your moods, as we all do in our youth, our sentimental dreams of adventure, our fancied love affairs. Here, I’ve moved the rook too far.” She changed the man’s position. “You’re unusually steady to be sure. I have only had inklings of a certain restiveness at times. I had it, for example, one evening not long ago, when you brought me that charming mountain laurel.” She paused and glanced up at me. “Sonia, my father, a blunt man, but one who husbanded his words, brought me up in the belief that silence was the ideal policy, that honesty was next best, and that falsehood should be reserved for state occasions. For example, the only lie I ever heard him tell was to Mr. Charles Francis Adams’ secretary who, under the impression that Papa was Mr. Stanley Pride, Consul General of Madrid, asked him to renew his acquaintance with the Secretary of the Navy at a dinner party at the Yacht Club. Papa said, ‘I shall be delighted to renew my acquaintance with Mr. Adams.’ He claimed that this was an equivocation rather than a direct lie, for he did not say Mr. Charles Francis Adams, and he could have meant Mr. Richard Chilton Adams or Mr. Archibald Revere Adams, two perfectly bona fide Adamses with whom he lunched every day at the Harvard Club. But silence, silence was what Papa chiefly counseled, and while I have so far as possible followed his precept, I must confess that there are times when you are a little too silent. Sometimes I cannot compass you. You become a cipher. I am afraid you will disappear altogether, vanish utterly. On that evening, for example, that you brought me the mountain laurel, I had the feeling while we talked that you were paying no attention to what you said. I did not ask you where you had been, though I had heard from Hopestill that you had not stayed for dinner, and I do not ask you now. But, my dear child, I cannot live with an image of you! If you are troubled by something, I implore you to let me know.”