human
Really, I don't understand you, he said.
gpt
You must leave me to conduct my own affairs in my own way, as you have always done. You can help me in the difficulties I have in my work--and they are heavy enough, God knows, with the sort of people I have to deal with here--by giving me peace and quietness in my own home. You can help me in no other way. The troubles I have fall upon my own shoulders, and I am acting rightly by you in trying to keep you unaffected by them.
human
But they do not only fall upon you, she said quietly.
gpt
We make friends with people, and everything seems to be going happily; and then suddenly we are not friends any longer. Often I have had to find it out for myself, and sometimes you don't even tell me what has happened to cause the change. It was so with the Beckleys. I have never known why we left off being friends with them. And I have never known why there was such disturbance before Mollie Walter was married. It would have been natural, as she was almost like your own daughter, as you so often used to say, that she should have been married from here, and that Mrs. Walter should have stayed on at the Cottage until after she was married. But her house at Wilborough was hurried on for her so that Mollie could be married from there, and you were not even asked to take part in the ceremony.
human
I certainly don't propose to go into old questions of that sort, he said.
gpt
They are over and done with, and--
human
I don't wish to go into them either, she said.
gpt
I didn't press you to take me into your confidence then, and I won't do it now. But I think you ought to tell me what has been the trouble with the Graftons. You have criticised them from time to time, as you criticise everybody, --he frowned at this sentence, which was unlike any she had ever used to him--