ong to learn?"

Ay, that I would. I told it her, and she listened silently, save only
now and then a cry of wonder or of sympathy that sounded sweet to my
ears,--just as I had dreamed of her listening when I used to pace the
deck of the brigantine John, at sea. And when at length I had finished,
she sat looking out over the Green Park, as tho' she had forgot my
presence.

And so Mrs. Manners came in and found us.

It had ever pleased me to imagine that Dorothy's mother had been in her
youth like Dorothy. She had the same tall figure, grace in its every
motion, and the same eyes of deep blue, and the generous but well-formed
mouth. A man may pity, but cannot conceive the heroism that a woman of
such a mould must have gone through who has been married since early
girlhood to a man like Mr. Manners. Some women would have been driven
quickly to frivolity, and worse, but this one had struggled year after
year to maintain an outward serenity to a critical world, and had
succeeded, tho' success had cost her dear. Each trial had deepened a
line of that face, had done its share to subdue the voice which had once
rung like Dorothy's; and in the depths of her eyes lingered a sadness
indefinable.

She gazed upon me with that kindness and tenderness I had always
received since the days when, younger and more beautiful than now, she
was the companion of my mother. And the unbidden shadow of a thought
came to me that these two sweet women had had some sadness in
common. Many a summer's day I remembered them sewing together in the
spring-house, talking in subdued voices which were hushed when I came
running in. And lo! the same memory was on Dorothy's mother then, half
expressed as she laid her hands upon my shoulders.

"Poor Elizabeth!" she said,--not to me, nor yet to Dorothy; "I wish that
she might have lived to see you now. It is Captain Jack again."

She sighed, and kissed me. And I felt at last that I had come home after
many wanderings. We sat down, mother and daughter on the sofa with their
fingers locked. She did not speak of Mr. Manners's conduct, or of my
stay in the sponging-house. And for this I was thankful.

"I have had a letter from Mr. Lloyd, Richard," she said.

"And my grandfather?" I faltered, a thickness in my throat.

"My dear boy," answered Mrs. Manners, gently, "he thinks you dead. But
you have written him?" she added hurriedly.

I nodded. "From Dumfries."

"He will have the letter soon," she said c