topped and her worn face flushed at the thought that she
had almost spoken slightingly of her son, had at least hinted
disappointment in him. She fidgeted with embarrassment as silence fell
upon them and she felt Gordon's eyes upon her. She could not resist
his steady gaze, and as her eyes met his the look in them stirred her
mother-heart to its depths and set her to trembling. She saw in it
wistfulness and loneliness and felt behind it the persistent
heart-hunger of the grown man for the mother in woman, for maternal
understanding and solicitude and affection.

"I knew right away," she said afterward to Penelope, "that he'd never
known a mother's love and that he was homesick for it and it made my
heart warm toward him more than ever. He looks so young, even younger
than Felix, and that minute he seemed as if he were just a boy."

"I hope you will let me come again," said Gordon as he bade them
good-bye. He took Mrs. Brand's toil-worn hand in both of his and with
gravely earnest face looked down into hers as he went on: "And if you
should hear--if I should do anything that seems--well, not friendly,
toward Felix, I hope you will try to believe that I am not doing it
to injure him, but because it seems to me right and because I truly
think it for his good."

Mrs. Brand was still trembling and she felt strangely moved. But her
usual shyness was all gone and she did not even notice that she was
finding it easy to talk with this stranger, easier, indeed, than it
had been, of late years, to talk with Felix. Her heart swelled and
throbbed with yearning over him.

"I am quite sure," she said, "that you will not do anything unless you
are convinced that it is right and for the best. No matter how it may
seem to others, I shall know that you expect good to come of it."

"Thank you!" His voice was low and it shook a little. He bent over her
hand and raised it to his lips. "If I had a mother I should want her
to be just like you! Will you try to think of me, sometimes, no matter
what I do, as being moved, perhaps, by the same spirit, at least the
same kind of spirit, as that of--of Felix's and Penelope's
grandfather?"

Her patient face and her brown eyes glowed with the emotions that
thrilled and fluttered in her heart. Belief in him, the sudden, sweet
intimacy into which their brief acquaintance had flowered, his seeming
need of her, and her own ardent wish to respond with all her
mother-wealth, filled her breast with new