p it. Make your mother sorry and
ashamed. It would be very easy. Tell her she's too old to be happy.
But say good-bye to me first."

"Sarah!"

"Why is it to be all sunshine for you, and all shade for her?" said
Sarah. "Hasn't she wept enough to please you? Mayn't she have her St.
Martin's summer? God gives it to her. Will _you_ take it away?"

"Sarah!"

He looked up at her crimsoned tearful face in dismay. Was this Sarah
the infantile--the pink-and-white--the seductive, laughing, impudent
Sarah? And yet how passionately Peter admired her in this mood of
virago, which he had never seen since the days of her childish rages
of long ago.

"Why do you suppose," said Sarah, disdainfully, "that I've been
letting you follow _me_ about all this summer, and desert _her_;
except to show her how little you are to be depended upon? To bring
home to her how foolish she'd be to fling away her happiness for your
sake. _You_, who at one word from me, were willing to turn her out of
her own home, to live in a wretched little villa at your very door.
Don't interrupt me," said Sarah, stamping, "and say you weren't
willing. You told her so. I meant you to tell her, and yet--I could
have killed you, Peter, when I heard her sweet voice faltering out to
me, that she would be ready and glad to give up her place to her boy's
wife, whenever the time should come."

"_She_ told you?" cried Peter.

"But she didn't say you'd asked her," cried Sarah, scornfully. "_I_
knew it, but she never guessed I did. She was only gently smoothing
away, as she hoped, the difficulties that lay in the path to _your_
happiness. Oh, that she could have believed it of me! But she thinks
only of your happiness. _You_, who would snatch away hers this minute
if you could. She never dreamt I knew you'd said a word."

She paused in her impassioned speech, and the tears dropped from the
dark blue eyes. Sarah was crying, and Peter was speechless with awe
and dismay.

"I think she would have died, Peter," said Sarah, solemnly, "before
she would have told me how brutal you'd been, and how stupid, and how
selfish. I meant you to show her all that. I thought it would open
her eyes. I was such a fool! As if anything could open the eyes of a
mother to the faults of her only son."

Peter looked at her with such despair and grief in his dark face that
her heart almost softened towards him; but she hardened it again
immediately.

"Do you mean that you--you've been playi