not, science
tells me, the man that I am now; and seven years hence I shall be yet
another. What right has my past man to bind this present 'me' in which
he has no particle of a share?" And Max, having taken wing on a fresh
notion, was off into flight when the Countess brought him to earth.

"And how long is your next lease going to be?" she inquired dryly, "if
seven years is all you can answer for?"

"My next man will renew," said Max confidently.

"Sisters of mercy don't accept tenants on those terms," she retorted.
And then, seeing that he looked at her with a benevolent eye, added,
"Oh, yes, I know that I did, but that isn't the sort of mercy you are
looking for now. You'll find, Max, that you need a religion in order to
become a freeholder. Mark my word! There! I couldn't have put it better
than that! And now as I've come to the end of _my_ lease I had better
retire and see to dilapidations and repairs."

She left him smiling; but he knew, in spite of her brave face and
jesting words, that there was still trouble of spirit to be gone
through; and the repairs took some time.

III

In the days that followed, Max, now launched on his new quest, had as
good and sympathetic a listener as lover could wish. And while the
Countess thus paid penance and endured some purgatory for a five years'
breach with her own conscience, she found compensations, as all sensibly
good women will when they come on logical results of their own making.
In our conventional readiness to reverence the mother and disown the
mistress as social institutions, we are apt to ignore, as though the
mere suggestion were an impiety, the fact that in their instincts and
affections they have often much in common. It is one of Nature's kindest
and wisest economies; yet perhaps the woman treasures it secretly,
because it is a quality of her sex scarcely to be understood by men. The
chaste mistress sleeps in many a mother's breast, ready to welcome in
her grown son that touch of the lover which nestles before it takes
flight; and in the unchaste mistress, homely of heart, there is often
more of the mother than her paramour has wit to discern.

The Countess Hilda, cut off from home ties and kindred in the very prime
of her maternal powers, had cast her eye on Max with a possessive but
with no predatory aim; and in her own illicit fashion, contrary to some
qualms of conscience and the strict dictates of her creed, had mothered
him through the dangero