from the few words which reached me, I
knew that they were recalling past times,
living over again the romance of youth.
Discoursing thus, they gained the stone stairs
which led from the river to our terrace by a
side-gate.

She bent over each of us children as we
passed through, and kissed us fondly. She
was always tender, but there was an earnestness
in her embrace that went direct to our
hearts: Cyril's eyes and mine were filled
with tears. The sun was setting gloriously;
the crimson fire went slowly down behind a
screen of woods, while above the mirroring
river hung fleecy clouds of gold, as if
reluctant to fade. All was still except the hum
of the belated bee or the drip of the boatman's
oar. My mother sat on a bench
beneath the lime-trees, and we were silent.
At last my father took her hand:

"There must," said he, "be an Infinite
Goodness over the world! Reason, perhaps,
may never solve the problem, but our hearts
are truer than our thoughts."

She gave him a look of unutterable joy,
and pressed her lips upon his hand. He
began again to speak, but she threw up her
arm with a sharp, quick gesture and a faint
cry; then sank gently backward. For a
minute we deemed her entranced in some
emotion too sacred to be dispelled; but
when, after a pause, my father raised her, and
gazed into her face, there was no mistaking,
even in the deepening shadows, its marble
pallor. He bent over what had been his
wife. A life pure and blessed as that of the
summer eve had vanished with its latest
beams.

CHAPTER THE THIRD.

I WILL pass rapidly over the events of some
years.

The blow of my mother's sudden death
fell with a different result upon each member
of her family. To my father, for whom most
might have been feared, it came the most
gently. I can see now that the very depth
of his love became his consolation. Could
that love—nourished by the virtues of the
lost, yearning for future and eternal reunion,
most vital when all visible trace of its
object had been swept away—could that love
be given but in mockery, or issue from a
source less than Divine?

It was on Cyril that the shock at first bore
most heavily. He wept convulsively, and
for days gave himself up to a silence like
despair. But the wistful affection of his
playmate Amelia won him in time to utter his
grief, and the utterance assuaged it. Again
they walked beneath the limes, and now it
was the girl's childish arm that clasped and
upheld her companion.

For myself, I was at first too much stunned
by the wound to realise its severity. The
proofs of my loss had to meet me suddenly
and repeatedly—as it were, at the sharp
corners of experience—before I was
convinced. In the hall still hung my mother's
garden bonnet; in her chamber was the
volume she had left unclosed. I lay for
nights listening to the tick of the hall-clock
from my open bed-room, and expecting a
gentle step upon the stair, before I knew that
it would come no more. But although the
worst was brought home to me so gradually,
my grief was not the less deep. Though I
strove to be a comfort to my father, a secret
pining for the love which I had lost grew
within me. I longed intensely, constantly—
as I now feel, sinfully—to be again with my
mother, to sleep and only wake in her arms.
This wish to follow her might have wrought
its own fulfilment, but for a visit paid us by
my maternal uncle. His duties as my
mother's trustee had brought him from the
south of France, where he resided. There
was that in my face and manner which
plainly denoted failing health, and at my
uncle's entreaties, I was allowed—nay,
commanded, for I yielded most reluctantly—to
return with him.

Change and time did their healing work
for me. I remained in France for three
years, that period being broken by a long
visit from my father and Cyril. When I
came back, Dr. Woodford had removed to
London, and my brother was at school. We
saw but little of the latter, even during
holidays, as he spent part of them with friends
at Winborough. At the end of three or four
years more, I again went to France—this
time to complete my education—and returned
to become mistress of my father's house.
Cyril was then residing with him in town.
Greatly to the delight of Roxby, my brother
had shown a marked bias for the career of a
painter, and was now a student in the
Academy. As for my father, he seemed to have
grown younger, so genial and serene was his
expression. Cyril, whose health had become
established, was now a stripling of more than
twenty. I could not but be proud of him—
of his face, bright with kindness and
intelligence, and of his simple, frank bearing.
Then at times he had my mother's old look
of placid affection, especially in those
moments of reverie to which he had been prone
from childhood. Of course we reverted to
old friends, especially to the Lathams.
Before long I discovered a portrait which
Cyril had recently taken of his early playmate
Amelia. It represented Miss Latham
at eighteen. I recalled easily the face,
classically-regular, with its pure tint of
olive, the clear earnest eyes, and the old
demure look now refined into a sentiment of
dignity.

When, in a few weeks' time, Cyril left
us for a short visit to Winborough, I was
at no loss to guess his chief motive for
the journey. During his absence I learned
from my father that the lad's intimacy with
the Lathams had continued until his departure