ouetted against the curtain,
and thought of Peter's narrow face. "Weak but obstinate," he muttered
to himself. "Shrewd, suspicious eyes, but a receding chin. What chance
would the boy have against a man? A man with strength to oppose him,
and brains to outwit him. None, save for the one undoubted fact--the
boy holds his mother's heart in the hollow of his careless hands."

There was a tremendous burst of cheering, no longer distant, and the
band played louder.

Lady Mary came hurrying across the terrace. Weeping and agitated, and
half blinded by her tears, she stumbled over the threshold of the
window, and almost fell into John's arms. He drew her into the shadow
of the curtain.

"John," she cried; she saw no one else. "Oh, I can't bear it! Oh,
Peter, Peter, my boy, my poor boy!"

The doctor, with a swift and noiseless movement, turned the handle of
the window next him, and let himself out on to the terrace.

When John looked up he was already gone. Lady Mary did not hear the
slight sound.

"Oh, John," she said, "my boy's come home--but--but--"

"I know," John said, very tenderly.

"I was afraid of breaking down before them all," she whispered. "Peter
was afraid I should break down, and I felt my weakness, and came
away."

"To me," said John.

His heart beat strongly. He drew her more closely into his arms,
deeply conscious that he held thus, for the first time, all he loved
best in the world.

"To you," said poor Lady Mary, very simply; as though aware only
of the rest and support that refuge offered, and not of all of its
strangeness. "Alas! it has grown so natural to come to _you_ now."

"It will grow more natural every day," said John.

She shook her head. "There is Peter now," she said faintly. Then,
looking into his face, she realized that John was not thinking of
Peter.

For a moment's space Lady Mary, too, forgot Peter. She leant against
the broad shoulder of the man who loved her; and felt as though all
trouble, and disappointment, and doubt had slidden off her soul, and
left her only the blissful certainty of happy rest.

Then she laid her hand very gently and entreatingly on his arm.

"I will not let you go," said John. "You came to me--at last--of your
own accord, Mary."

She coloured deeply and leant away from his arm, looking up at him in
distress.

"I could not help it, John," she said, very simply and naturally. "But
oh, I don't know if I can--if I ought--to come to you any more.