estly and placing her small white hand on the black sleeve of the
attorney, "she cared little enough for me, and not at all for London
and for society. She did not understand the many duties that devolve on
a woman of fashion.... And I was that in those days! ... twenty years
ago!"

"Ah! Truly! truly!" sighed Master Skyffington.

"Mayhap she acted according to her own lights.... After some years she
became a convert to that strange new faith ... of the people who call
themselves 'Friends' ... who salute no one with the hat, and who talk so
strangely, saying: 'thee' and 'thou' even when addressing their betters.
One George Fox had a great hold on her. He was quite a youth then, but
she thought him a saint. 'Tis he, methinks, poisoned her mind against
me, and caused her to curse me on her deathbed."

She gave a little shudder--of superstition, perhaps. The maternal
curse--she felt--was mayhap bearing fruit after all. Master
Skyffington's watery eyes expressed gentle sympathy. His calling had
taught him many of the hidden secrets of human nature and of Life: he
guessed that the time--if not already here--was nigh at hand, when this
unfortunate woman would realize the emptiness of her life, and would
begin to reap the bitter harvest of the barren seeds which she had sown.

"Aye! I lay it all at the door of these 'Friends' who turned a mother's
heart against her own daughter," continued Mistress de Chavasse
vehemently. "She never told me that she was sick, sent me neither letter
nor message; only after her death a curt note came to me, writ in her
hand, entrusted to one of her own co-worshipers, a canting, mouthing
creature, who grinned whilst I read the heartless message. My mother had
sent her grandchildren away, so she told me in the letter, when she felt
that the Lord was calling her to Him. She had placed my boys--my boys,
master!--in the care of a trusted 'friend' who would bring them up in
the fear of God, away from the influence of their mother. My boys,
master, remember! ... they were to be brought up in ignorance of their
name--of the very existence of their mother. The 'friend,' doubtless a
fellow Quaker--had agreed to this on my mother's deathbed."

"Hm! 'tis passing strange, and passing sad," said the attorney, with
real sympathy now, for there was a pathetic note of acute sorrow in
Mistress de Chavasse's voice, "but at the time ... hem ... and with
money and influence ... hem ... much might have been done."