She had always been strong-willed. The mother had been wont to say, somewhat boastfully, that her oldest daughter resembled her in strength of purpose.
Human nature is a curious study. What Mrs. Ansted would do, had been a matter of extreme solicitude to several people. Mr. Chessney believed that she would make Alice's life miserable; that she would become Claire Benedict's enemy, and injure her if she could, and that she would withdraw her younger daughters from not only Claire's, but their eldest sister's influence, and from the church to which they had become attached.
"I do not mean that she will do this in revenge," he said to Claire, "or that she will really intend to injure anybody. She is one of those persons who can make herself believe that she is doing God's service by just such management as this. I am sorry for Alice and for the young girls. It gives me a sense of relief and joy to remember that Louis is forever safe from pitfalls, and yet sometimes I can not help wishing that he could have lived for a few months longer. He had great influence over his mother. She tried to manage him, and his indolent will allowed himself to be influenced in a wonderful manner, but when he did really rouse, he had great power over his mother."
Mrs. Ansted did none of the things which were feared. Instead, she turned suddenly, and with apparent loathing, from the life which she had heretofore lived. She sent for Claire one morning, greeted her with a burst of tears as her dear child, and declared that had she understood the feeling between Louis and herself nothing would have given her greater joy than to have welcomed her into the family.
Claire opened her mouth to protest and then closed it again. If this were the form of cross that she was to bear, it was peculiar, certainly; but why not bear it as well as any other? Of what use to explain again, what the son's own lips had told, that she had utterly refused the honor offered her--that she had never for a moment desired to be received into this family? If the bereaved mother had really succeeded in making herself believe such folly as this, why not let it pass--the grave had closed over the possibility of its ever being realized?