he first to speak, and though there was no softening of the
stern features, yet his tones were gentle, almost pitying, as he
said,--

"I have come as you requested. Why did you send for me? What have
you to say?"

At the sound of his voice she seemed somewhat reassured, and
advancing a few steps towards him, she repeated his words,--

"Why did I send for you? Why should I not send for you? Think
you a mother would have no desire to see her own son after long
years of cruel separation from him?"

"There is no need to call up the past," he said, more coldly; "the
separation to which you refer was, under existing circumstances,
the best for all concerned. It undoubtedly caused suffering, but
you were not the sufferer; there could be no great depth of
maternal love where there was neither love nor loyalty as a wife."

Her dark eyes grew tender and luminous as she fixed them upon his
face, while she beckoned him to a seat and seated herself near and
facing him.

"You forget," she replied, in the low, rich tones he had so often
heard at Fair Oaks; "you forget that a mother's love is instinctive,
born within her with the birth of her child, while a wife's love
must be won. I must recall the past to you, and you must listen;
'twas for this I sent for you, that you, knowing the past, might
know that, however deeply I may have sinned, I have been far more
deeply sinned against."

"Not as regards my father," he interposed, quickly, as she paused
to note the effect of her words; "he sacrificed fortune, home,
friends, everything for you, and you rewarded his love and devotion
only with the basest infidelity."

"That your father loved me, I admit," she continued, in the same
low, musical tones, scarcely heeding his words; "but, as I said a
moment ago, a wife's love must be won, and he failed to win my
love."

"Was his treacherous brother so much more successful then in that
direction than he?" Harold questioned, sternly. "Within six months
after your marriage to my father, you admitted that you married him
only that you might have Hugh Mainwaring for your lover."

She neither flushed nor quailed under the burning indignation of his
gaze, but her eyes were fastened upon him intently as the eyes of
the charmer upon his victim.

"Half truths are ever harder to refute than falsehood," she replied,
softly. "I said that once under great provocation, but if I sought
to make Hugh Mainwaring my lover, it was not that I