had felt happy to-night--not madly,
foolishly happy, as so many men feel at such moments, but reasonably,
decorously pleased with his present and his future. He was making a
_mariage de convenance_, but there had been another man on the lists, a
younger man than himself, and that had added a most pleasing zest to the
pursuit. He, aided of course by Winifred Fanshawe's prudent parents, had
won--won a very pretty, well-bred, well-behaved girl to wife. What more
could a man of forty-one, who had lived every moment of his life, ask of
that providence which shapes our ends?

The traffic suddenly parted, and the horse leapt forward.

As they reached their own front door, Mrs. Elwyn again spoke: "Perhaps I
ought to add," she said hurriedly, "that I know one thing to Mrs.
Bellair's credit. I am told that she is a most devoted and careful
mother to that little boy of hers. I heard to-day that the child is
seriously ill, and that she and the child's nurse are doing everything
for him."

Mrs. Elwyn's voice had softened, curiously. She had an old-fashioned
prejudice against trained nurses.

Hugh Elwyn helped his mother into the house; then, in the hall, he bent
down and just touched her cheek with his lips.

"Won't you come up into the drawing-room? Just for a few minutes?" she
asked; there was a note of deep, yearning disappointment in her voice,
and her face looked grey and tired, very different from the happy,
placid air it had worn during the little dinner party.

"No, thank you, mother, I won't come up just now. I think I'll go out
again for half an hour. I haven't walked at all to-day, and it's so
hot--I feel I shouldn't sleep if I turn in now."

He was punishing his mother as he had seen other sons punishing their
mothers, but as he himself had never before to-night been tempted to
punish his. Nay, more, as Hugh Elwyn watched her slow ascent up the
staircase, he told himself that she had hurt and angered him past entire
forgiveness. He had sometimes suspected that she knew of that fateful
episode in his past life, but he had never supposed that she would speak
of it to him, especially not now, after years had gone by, and when,
greatly to please her, he was about to make what is called a "suitable"
marriage.

He was just enough to know that his mother had hurt herself by hurting
him, but that did not modify his feelings of anger and of surprise at
what she had done. Of course she thought she knew everything there w