think she has no heart."

Ralph had wondered a little as he read this, at his mother's curious
interest in the girl; and he wondered too at the report of Beatrice's
callousness. It was her damned pride, he assured himself.

Then, one evening as he arrived home from Hackney where he had slept the
previous night; he found a messenger waiting for him. The letter had not
been sent on to him, as he had not left word where he was going.

It contained a single line from his father.

"Your mother is ill. Come at once. She wishes for you."

* * * * *

It was in the stormy blackness of a February midnight that he rode up
through the lighted gatehouse to his home. Above the terrace as he came
up the road the tall hall-window glimmered faintly like a gigantic
luminous door hung in space; and the lower window of his father's room
shone and faded as the fire leapt within.

A figure rose up suddenly from before the hall-fire as he came in,
bringing with him a fierce gust of wet wind through the opened door; and
when he had slipped off his dripping cloak into his servant's hands, he
saw that his father was there two yards away, very stern and white, with
outstretched hands.

"My son," said the old man, "you are too late. She died two hours ago."

It was a fierce shock, and for a moment he stood dazed, blinking at the
light, holding his father's warm slender hands in his own, and trying to
assimilate the news. He had been driven inwards, and his obstinacy
weakened, during that long ride from town through the stormy sunset into
the black, howling night; memories had reasserted themselves on the
strength of his anxiety; and the past year or two slipped from him, and
left him again the eldest son of the house and of his two parents.

Then as he looked into the pale bearded face before him, and the eyes
which had looked into his own a few months ago with such passionate
anger, he remembered all that was between them, dropped the hands and
went forward to the fire.

His father followed him and stood by him there as he spread his fingers
to the blaze, and told him the details, in short detached sentences.

She had been seized with pain and vomiting on the previous night at
supper time; the doctor had been sent for, and had declared the illness
to be an internal inflammation. She had grown steadily worse on the
following day, with periods of unconsciousness; she had asked for Ralph
an hour after she