A laugh that rang true even to Lady Mary's sensitive perceptions.
"But didn't _you_ look upon everybody over thirty as, quite old when you were one-and-twenty?
I'm sure I did." "Perhaps.

But yet--I don't know.

I am his mother.

It is natural he should feel so.

He made me realize how preposterous it was for me, the mother of a grown-up son, to be thinking selfishly of my own happiness, as though I were a young, fresh girl just starting life." "I had hoped," said John, quietly, "that you might be thinking a little of my happiness too." "Oh, John! But your happiness and mine seemed all the same thing," she said ingenuously.