cheerful voice,
"Felicita is asleep, I hope, and the babies are all right. But I have
been late at bank-work; and I turned in just to have a look at you,
mother, before I go to bed."

"That's my good son," she said, smiling, and taking his hand between her
own in a fond clasp.

"Am I a good son?" he asked.

His mother's face was a fair, sweet face still, the soft brown hair
scarcely touched with white, and with clear, dark gray eyes gazing up
frankly into his own. They were eyes like these, with their truthful
light shining through them, inherited from her, which in himself had won
the unquestioning trust and confidence of those who were brought into
contact with him. There was no warning signal of disloyalty in his face
to set others on their guard. His mother looked up at him tenderly.

"Always a good son, the best of sons, Roland," she replied, "and a good
husband, and a good father. Only one little fault in my good son: too
spendthrift, too lavish. You are not a fine, rich lord, with large
lands, and much, very much money, my boy. I do my best in the house; but
women can only save pennies, while men fling about pounds."

"But you love me with all my faults, mother?" he said.

"As my own soul," she answered.

There was a profound solemnity in her voice and look, which penetrated
to his very heart. She was not speaking lightly. It was in the same
spirit with which. Paul wrote, after saying, "For I am persuaded that
neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor
things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other
creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in
Christ Jesus our Lord;" "I could wish that myself were separate from
Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh." His mother
had reached that sublime height of love for him.

He stood silent, looking down on her with dull, aching eyes, as he said
to himself it was perhaps for the last time. It was the last time she
would ever see him as her good son. With her, in her heart and memory,
all his life dwelt; she knew the whole of it, with no break or
interruption. Only this one hidden thread, which had been woven into the
web in secret, and which was about to stand out with such clear and open
disclosure; of this she had no faint suspicion. For a minute or two he
felt as if he must tell her of it; that he must roll off this horrible
weight from himself, and crush her faith