"It wasn't turning away from you, it was merely an atonement. Your
influence was visible even there."

"I am sorry for the child, of course," she said sadly, after weeping a
little--"who knows but she may have inherited her mother's character?"

"The doctor said you were to be quiet, Angela," remarked Kesiah, who had
stood at the foot of the bed in the attitude of a Spartan. "Jonathan, if
you begin to excite her, you'd better go."

"Oh, my boy, my darling boy," sobbed Mrs. Gay, with her head on his
shoulder, "I have but one comfort and that is the thought that you are
so different--that you will never shatter my faith in you. If you only
knew how thankful I am to feel that you are free from these dreadful
weaknesses of men."

Cowed by her helplessness, he looked down on her with shining eyes.

"Remember the poor devil loved you, mother, and be merciful to his
memory," he replied, touched, for the first time, by the thought of his
uncle.

"I shall try, Jonathan, I shall try, though the very thought of evil is
a distress to me," she replied, with a saintly look. "As for the girl, I
have only the tenderest pity for the unfortunate creature."

"That's like you, mother."

"Kesiah says that she has behaved very well. Didn't you say so, Kesiah?"

"Yes, Mr. Chamberlayne told me that she appeared perfectly indifferent
when he spoke to her. She even remarked, I believe, that she didn't see
that it concerned her."

"Well, she's spirit enough. Now stop talking, mother, I am going."

"God bless you, my darling boy--you have never failed me."

Instead of appeasing his conscience, the remark completed his descent
into the state of disenchantment he had been approaching for hours. The
shock of his mother's illness, coming after three days of marriage, had
been too much for his unstable equilibrium, and he felt smothered by
an oppression which, in some strange way, seemed closing upon him from
without. It was in the air--in the faded cretonne of the room, in
the grey flashes of the swallows from the eaves of the house, in the
leafless boughs etched delicately against the orange light of the
sky. Like most adventurers of the emotions, he was given to swift
despondencies as well as to vivid elations, and the tyranny of a mood
was usually as absolute as it was brief. The fact was there while it
lasted like the physical sensation of hunger or gratification. When it
departed he seldom spurred his imagination to the pursuit of