Augustine.

"He's really dangerous, your son, you know. Please don't leave me alone
with him again," Sir Hugh smiled and pleaded; it was with almost his own
lightness, but his face still twitched with anger.

"What have you said to him?" Amabel asked.

Augustine's eyes were drawing her down into their torment.--Unfortunate
one.--That presage of her maternity echoed in her now. His stern young
face seemed to have been framed, destined from the first for this
foreseen misery.

Sir Hugh had pulled himself together. He looked at the mother and son.
And he understood her fear.

He went to her, leaned over her, a hand above her shoulder on the door.
He reassured and protected her; and, truly, in all their story, it had
never been with such sincerity and grace.

"Dearest, it's nothing. I've merely had to defend my rights. Will you
assure this young firebrand that my misdemeanours didn't force you to
leave me. That there were misdemeanours I don't deny; and of course you
are too good for the likes of me; but your coming away wasn't my fault,
was it.--That's what I've said.--And that saints forgive sinners,
sometimes.--That's all I want you to tell him."

Amabel still gazed into her son's eyes. It seemed to her, now that she
must shut herself out from it for ever, that for the first time in all
her life she saw his love.

It broke over her; it threatened and commanded her; it implored and
supplicated--ah the supplication beyond words or tears!--Selflessness
made it stern. It was for her it threatened; for her it prayed.

All these years the true treasure had been there beside her, while she
worshipped at the spurious shrine. Only her sorrow, her solicitude had
gone out to her son; the answering love that should have cherished and
encompassed him flowed towards its true goal only when it was too late.
He could not love her when he knew.

And he was to know. That had come to her clearly and unalterably while
she had leaned, half fallen, half kneeling, against her bed, dying, it
seemed to her, to all that she had known of life or hope.

But all was not death within her. In the long, the deadly stupor, her
power to love still lived. It had been thrown back from its deep channel
and, wave upon wave, it seemed heaped upon itself in some narrow abyss,
tormented and shuddering; and at last by its own strength, rather than
by thought or prayer of hers, it had forced an outlet.

It was then as if she found herself once more