oment came so close
that all secondary matters that could divide them seemed to fade away.

"But now," said Lady Markland, after this little interval, "he is
worried and disturbed again, by all the lawyers think it right to do. I
should like to spare him all that, but I am helpless in their hands. Oh,
dear Mrs. Warrender, you will understand. There are so many things that
make it more difficult. There is--Geoff."

Mrs. Warrender pressed her hands and gave her a look full of sympathy;
but she said nothing. She did not make a cheerful protest that all these
things were without importance, and that Geoff was no drawback, as
perhaps it was hoped she might do. Lady Markland drew back a little,
discouraged--waiting for some word of cheer which did not come.

"You know," she said, her voice trembling, "what my boy has been to me:
everything! until this new light that I never dreamed of, that I never
had hoped for, or thought of. You know how we lived together, he and I.
He was my companion, more than a child, sharing every thought. You
know----"

"Lady Markland, you have had a great deal of trouble, but how much with
it--a child like that, and then----"

"And then--Theo! Was there ever a woman so blessed--or so---- Oh, help
me to know what I am to do between them! You can understand better than
any of the young ones. Don't you see," said Lady Markland, with a smile
in which there was a kind of despair, "that though I am not old, as you
say, I am on your level rather than on his, that _you_ can understand
better than he?"

If it were possible that a woman who is a mother could cease to be that
in the first place and become a friend, first of all a sympathiser in the
very difficulties that overwhelm her son, that miracle was accomplished
then. The woman whom she had with difficulty accepted as Theo's future
wife became, for a moment, nearer to her in this flood of sympathy
than Theo himself. The woman's pangs and hindrances were closer to
her experience than the man's. To him, in the heat of his young
passion, nothing was worth considering that interfered with the perfect
accomplishment of his love. But to her--the young woman, who had to
piece on the present to the past, who though she might have abandoned
father and mother could never abandon her child--the other woman's heart
went out with a pang of fellow-feeling. Mrs. Warrender, like most women,
had an instinctive repugnance to the idea of a second marriage at all,
b