re,--even when your husband was alive. Don't be angry,
Mrs. Peyton; HE would not, and need not, have been angry; he would have
pitied the foolish boy, who, in the very innocence and ignorance of his
passion, might have revealed it to him as he did to everybody but ONE.
And yet, I sometimes think you might have guessed it, had you thought of
me at all. It must have been on my lips that day I sat with you in the
boudoir. I know that I was filled with it; with it and with you; with
your presence, with your beauty, your grace of heart and mind,--yes,
Mrs. Peyton, even with your own unrequited love for Susy. Only, then, I
knew not what it was."

"But I think I can tell you what it was then, and now," said Mrs.
Peyton, recovering her nervous little laugh, though it died a moment
after on her lips. "I remember it very well. You told me then that
I REMINDED YOU OF YOUR MOTHER. Well, I am not old enough to be your
mother, Mr. Brant, but I am old enough to have been, and might have
been, the mother of your wife. That was what you meant then; that
is what you mean now. I was wrong to accuse you of trying to make me
ridiculous. I ask your pardon. Let us leave it as it was that day in the
boudoir, as it is NOW. Let me still remind you of your mother,--I know
she must have been a good woman to have had so good a son,--and when
you have found some sweet young girl to make you happy, come to me for
a mother's blessing, and we will laugh at the recollection and
misunderstanding of this evening."

Her voice did not, however, exhibit that exquisite maternal tenderness
which the beatific vision ought to have called up, and the persistent
voice of Clarence could not be evaded in the shadow.

"I said you reminded me of my mother," he went on at her side, "because
I knew her and lost her only as a child. She never was anything to me
but a memory, and yet an ideal of all that was sweet and lovable in
woman. Perhaps it was a dream of what she might have been when she was
as young in years as you. If it pleases you still to misunderstand me,
it may please you also to know that there is a reminder of her even
in this. I have no remembrance of a word of affection from her, nor a
caress; I have been as hopeless in my love for her who was my mother, as
of the woman I would make my wife."

"But you have seen no one, you know no one, you are young, you scarcely
know your own self! You will forget this, you will forget ME! And
if--if--I should--lis