to him. And then
I was at school, and he was away in the East. And then poor mother
died while he was living in the Blue Mountains, and I never saw him
again. When I wrote to him about Aunt Janet he answered me very
kindly but he was so very just in the matter that I got afraid of
him. And after that I ran away, and have been roaming ever since; so
there was never a chance of our meeting. But that letter of his has
opened my eyes. To think of him following me that way all over the
world, waiting to hold out a helping hand if I should want it, I only
wish I had known, or even suspected, the sort of man he was, and how
he cared for me, and I would sometimes have come back to see him, if
I had to come half round the world. Well, all I can do now is to
carry out his wishes; that will be my expiation for my neglect. He
knew what he wanted exactly, and I suppose I shall come in time to
know it all and understand it, too.

I was thinking something like this when Mr. Trent began to talk, so
that all he said fitted exactly into my own thought. The two men
were evidently great friends--I should have gathered that, anyhow,
from the Will--and the letters--so I was not surprised when Mr. Trent
told me that they had been to school together, Uncle Roger being a
senior when he was a junior; and had then and ever after shared each
other's confidence. Mr. Trent, I gathered, had from the very first
been in love with my mother, even when she was a little girl; but he
was poor and shy, and did not like to speak. When he had made up his
mind to do so, he found that she had by then met my father, and could
not help seeing that they loved each other. So he was silent. He
told me he had never said a word about it to anyone--not even to my
Uncle Roger, though he knew from one thing and another, though he
never spoke of it, that he would like it. I could not help seeing
that the dear old man regarded me in a sort of parental way--I have
heard of such romantic attachments being transferred to the later
generation. I was not displeased with it; on the contrary, I liked
him better for it. I love my mother so much--I always think of her
in the present--that I cannot think of her as dead. There is a tie
between anyone else who loved her and myself. I tried to let Mr.
Trent see that I liked him, an