n them to flame again; but the result of his attitude
served to weaken hers. She did not argue with conviction after finding
his temper. By some evil chance, that seemed more like art than
accident, he struck old wounds, and she was interested and agitated to
find that now he knew all there was to be known of the past and its
exact significance. The dream hidden so closely in her heart: that there
might yet be a reconciliation--the dream finally killed when she
perceived that Ironsyde had fallen in love with Estelle Waldron--was no
dream in her son's mind. What she knew was impossible, till now
represented no impossibility to him. He actually declared it as a thing
which, in his moral outlook, ought to be. Only so could the past be
retrieved, or the future made endurable. But to that matter they did not
immediately come. She dined at the farmer's table with Abel and three
men. Then he was told that he might make holiday and spend the afternoon
with his mother where he pleased. He took her therefore to the old
barrows nigh Knapp, and there on a stone they sat, watched the sun sink
over distant woodlands and talked together till the dusk was down.

"I ought never to have trusted her," he said. "But I did. And, if I'd
thought she would ever have married him, I wouldn't have trusted her. I
thought she was the right sort; but if she was, she would never have
married a man who had sworn to marry you."

"Good gracious, Abel! Whatever are you talking about?" she asked,
concerned to find the matter in his mind.

"I'm talking about things that happened," he answered. "I'm not a child
now. I'm nearly seventeen and older than that, for I overheard two of
the men say so. You needn't tell me these things; I found them out for
myself, and I hated Raymond Ironsyde from the time I could hate anybody,
because the honest feeling to hate him was in me. And nobody has the
right to marry him but you, and he's got no right to marry anybody but
you. But he doesn't know the meaning of justice, and she is not fine, or
brave, or clever, or any of the things I thought she was, because she
wants to marry him."

His mother considered this speech.

"It's no good vexing yourself about the past," she said. "You and me
have got to look to the future, Abel, and not to dwell on all that don't
make the future any easier. It's difficult enough, but, for us, the
luxury of pride and hate isn't possible. I know very well what you feel.
It all went through