greement, not anything but assent; while all the time I felt how
hollow was so much you said--a cloak of words to cover up the real
thought behind. Before I knew the truth, I felt the shadow of
secrecy in your life. When you talked most, I felt you most
secretive, and the feeling slowly closed the door upon all frankness
and sympathy and open speech between us. I was always shy and self-
conscious and self-centred, and thought little of myself; and I
needed deep love and confidence and encouragement to give out what
was in me. I gave nothing out, nothing to you that you wanted, or
sought for, or needed. You were complete, self-contained. Harry,
my beloved babe Harry, helped at first; but, as the years went on,
he too began to despise me for my little intellect and slow
intelligence, and he grew to be like you in all things--and
secretive also, though I tried so hard to be to him what a mother
should be. Oh, Bobby, Bobby--I used to call you that in the days
before we were married, and I will call you that now when all is
over and done--why did you not tell me all? Why did you not tell me
that my boy, my baby Harry, was not your only child, that there had
been another wife, and that your eldest son was alive?

"I know all. I have known all for years. The clergyman who married
you to Mercy Claridge was a distant relative of my mother's, and
before he died he told me. When you married her, he knew you only
as James Fetherdon, but, years afterwards, he saw and recognised
you. He held his peace then, but at last he came to me. And I did
not speak. I was not strong enough, nor good enough, to face the
trouble of it all. I could not endure the scandal, to see my own
son take the second place--he is so brilliant and able and
unscrupulous, like yourself; but, oh, so sure of winning a great
place in the world, surer than yourself ever was, he is so
calculating and determined and ambitious! And though he loves me
little, as he loves you little, too, yet he is my son, and for what
he is we are both responsible, one way or another; and I had not the
courage to give him the second place, and the Quaker, David
Claridge, the first place. Why Luke Claridge, his grandfather,
chose the course he did, does not concern me, no more than why you
chose secrecy, and kept your own firstborn legitimate son, of whom
you might well be proud, a