of him you'd like seeing him oftener. I should think that since he
is the best of friends he would want to come oftener, you know."

When he had said these words he flushed violently. It was an echo of his
mother's flush. And she sat silent, finding no words.

"Mother," said Augustine, "forgive me. That was impertinent of me. It's
no affair of mine."

She thought so, too, apparently, for she found no words in which to tell
him that it was his affair. Her hands clasped tightly in her lap, her
eyes downcast, she seemed shrunken together, overcome by his tactless
intrusion.

"Forgive me," Augustine repeated.

The supplication brought her the resource of words again. "Of course,
dear. It is only--I can't explain it to you. It is very complicated.
But, though it seems so strange to you,--to everybody, I know--it is
just that: though we don't live together, and though I see so little of
your father, I do care for him very, very much. More than for anybody in
the world,--except you, of course, dear Augustine."

"Oh, don't be polite to me," he said, and smiled. "More than for anybody
in the world; stick to it."

She could but accept the amendment, so kindly and, apparently, so
lightly pressed upon her, and she answered him with a faint, a grateful
smile, saying, in a low voice:--"You see, dear, he is the noblest person
I have ever known." Tears were in her eyes. Augustine turned away his
own.

They sat then for a little while in silence, the mother and son.

Her eyes downcast, her hands folded in an attitude that suggested some
inner dedication, Amabel Channice seemed to stay her thoughts on the
vision of that nobility. And though her son was near her, the thoughts
were far from him.

It was characteristic of Augustine Channice, when he mused, to gaze
straight before him, whatever the object might be that met his unseeing
eyes. The object now was the high Autumnal sky outside, crossed only
here and there by a drifting fleet of clouds.

The light fell calmly upon the mother and son and, in their stillness,
their contemplation, the two faces were like those on an old canvas,
preserved from time and change in the trance-like immutability of art.
In colour, the two heads chimed, though Augustine's hair was vehemently
gold and there were under-tones of brown and amber in his skin. But the
oval of Lady Channice's face grew angular in her son's, broader and more
defiant; so that, palely, darkly white and gold, on their de