th a leading place among her own small circle.

She loved him, and was proud of him; yet at the bottom of her heart she
had never absolved him from his father's death. But for his
extravagance, and the misfortunes he had brought upon them, her old
general would be alive still--pottering about in the spring sunshine,
spudding the daisies from the turf, or smoking his pipe beneath the
thickening trees. Silently her heart still yearned and hungered for the
husband of her youth; his son did not replace him.

Nevertheless, when he came down to her with this halo of glory upon him,
and smoked up and down her small garden through the mild spring days,
gossiping to her of all the great things that had befallen him,
repeating to her, word for word, his conversation with the Prime
Minister, and his interview with the Commander-in-Chief, or making her
read all the letters of congratulation he had received, her mother's
heart thawed within her as it had not done for long. Her ears told her
that he was still vain and a boaster; her memory held the indelible
records of his past selfishness; but as he walked beside her, his fair
hair blown back from his handsome brow, and eyes that were so much
younger than the rest of the face, his figure as spare and boyish now as
when he had worn the colors of the Charterhouse eleven, she said to
herself, in that inward and unsuspected colloquy she was always holding
with her own heart about him, that if his father could have seen him now
he would have forgiven him everything. According to her secret
Evangelical faith, God "deals" with every soul he has created--through
joy or sorrow, through good or evil fortune. He had dealt with herself
through anguish and loss. Henry, it seemed, was to be moulded through
prosperity. His good fortune was already making a better man of him.

Certainly he was more affectionate and thoughtful than before. He would
have liked to give her money, of which he seemed to have an unusual
store; but she bade him keep what he had for his own needs. Her own
little bit of money, saved from the wreck of their fortunes, was enough
for her. Then he went into Ryde and brought her back a Shetland shawl
and a new table-cloth for her little sitting-room, which she accepted
with a warmer kiss than she had given him for years.

He left her on a bright, windy morning which flecked the blue Solent
with foam and sent the clouds racing to westward. She walked back along
the sands, thin