eal into the dark, bright eyes. She had lost her
old frankness. Time was when Mrs. Vyvian could read all her thoughts,
and very rebellious thoughts they often were. But now there seemed to
be a sealed chamber in the girl's heart. She never spoke of the
future, and for the first time her watchful friend saw in her a nervous
fear that distressed her. Carefully and cautiously the governess tried
to ascertain the cause; she felt sure at last that, young as she was,
carefully as she had been watched, Beatrice Earle had a secret in her
life that she shared with no one else.

Chapter XIX

There were confusion and dismay in the stately home of the Earles. One
sultry morning in August Lord Earle went out into the garden, paying no
heed to the excessive heat. As he did not return to luncheon, the
butler went in search of him and found his master lying as one dead on
the ground. He was carried to his own room, doctors were summoned in
hot haste from far and near; everything that science or love, skill or
wisdom could suggest was done for him, but all in vain. The hour had
come when he must leave home, rank, wealth, position--whatever he
valued most--when he must answer for his life and what he had done with
it--when he must account for wealth, talent, for the son given to
him--when human likings, human passions, would seem so infinitely
little.

But while Lord Earle lay upon the bed, pale and unconscious, Lady
Earle, who knelt by him and never left him, felt sure that his mind and
heart were both active. He could not speak; he did not seem to
understand. Who knows what passes in those dread moments of silence,
when the light of eternity shows so clearly all that we have done in
the past? It may be that while he lay there, hovering as it were
between two worlds, the remembrance of his son struck him like a
two-edged sword--his son, his only child given to him to train, not
only for earth but for heaven--the boy he had loved and idolized, then
cast off, and allowed to become a wanderer on the face of the earth.
It may be that his stern, sullen pride, his imperious self-will, his
resolute trampling upon the voice of nature and duty, confronted him in
the new light shining upon him. Perhaps his own words returned to him,
that until he lay dead Ronald should never see Earlescourt again; for
suddenly the voice they thought hushed forever sounded strangely in the
silence of that death chamber.

"My son!" cried the d