The fondness of this pair, it
must be added, is not wholly expended in return. They are extremely
united, but their life is more domestic than might have been expected
from the preliminary signs. It owes a portion of its concentration
to the fact that Mrs. Tramore has now so many places to go to that
she has almost no time to come to her daughter's. She is, under her
son-in-law's roof, a brilliant but a rare apparition, and the other
day he remarked upon the circumstance to his wife.
"If it hadn't been for you," she replied, smiling, "she might have
had her regular place at our fireside."
"Good heavens, how did I prevent it?" cried Captain Jay, with all the
consciousness of virtue.
"You ordered it otherwise, you goose!" And she says, in the same
spirit, whenever her husband commends her (which he does, sometimes,
extravagantly) for the way she launched her mother: "Nonsense, my
dear--practically it was YOU!"
End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Chaperon, by Henry James
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