It is interesting to note the extremes possible in one and the same character: harshness and gentleness, manliness and childishness, apathy and fierce endeavor.
Perhaps she had formerly displayed rather more than a motherly feeling for one of her son's friends, but she now occupied too high a position in the business to indulge in such childishness.
The most modest exercise of the intellect, not to say of decency, should certainly be enough to convince these interpreters of the perfect childishness and unworthiness of such a misuse of the divine digital dexterity.