When she was in these moods, Stephen's silence sometimes provoked her past endurance.
"Can't you speak, Stephen ?" she would exclaim.
"What would be the use, mother ?" he would say sadly.

"If you do not know that the great aim of my life is to make you happy, it is of no use for me to keep on saying it.

If it would make you any happier to keep on discussing and discussing this question indefinitely, I would endure even that; but it would not." To do Mrs.White justice, she was generally ashamed of these ebullitions of unreasonable ill-temper, and endeavored to atone for them afterward by being more than ordinarily affectionate and loving in her manner towards Stephen.

But her shame was short-lived, and never made her any the less unreasonable or exacting when the next occasion occurred; so that, although Stephen received her affectionate epithets and caresses with filial responsiveness, he was never in the slightest degree deluded by them.

He took them for what they were worth, and held himself no whit freer from constraint, no whit less ready for the next storm.