se wherein
we stand round the grave and know that the end of all things has come.
And while North Aston wondered, and Alick mourned, and Edgar repented of
his past folly with his handsome head in Adelaide's lap, Leam Dundas
moved slowly through the shadow to the light, and from her chastisement
gathered that sweet grace of patience which redeemed her soul and raised
her from sin to sanctity.

CHAPTER XL.

LOST AND NOW FOUND.

In bringing up Alick tied tight to her apron-strings, feeding him on
moral pap, putting his mind into petticoats, and seeking to make him
more of a woman than a man, Mrs. Corfield had defeated her design and
destroyed her own influence. During his early growth the boy had yielded
to her without revolt, because he was more modest than
self-assertive--had no solid point of resistance and no definite purpose
for which to resist; but after his college career he developed on an
independent line, and his soul escaped altogether from his mother's
hold. Had she let him ripen into manhood in the freedom of natural
development, she would have been his chosen friend and confidante to the
end: having invaded the most secret chambers of his mind, and sought to
mould every thought according to the pattern which she held best, when
the reaction set in the pendulum swung back in proportion to its first
beat; and as a protest against his former thraldom he now made her a
stranger to his inner life and shut her out inexorably from the holy
place of his sorrow.

The mother felt her son's mind slipping from her, but what could she do?
Who can set time backward or reanimate the dead? Day by day found him
more silent and more suffering, the poor little woman nearly as
miserable as himself. But the name of Leam, standing as the spectre
between them, was never mentioned after Mrs. Corfield's first outburst
of indignation at her flight--indignation not because she was really
angry with Leam, but because Alick was unhappy.

After Alick's stern rejoinder, "Mother, the next time you speak ill of
Leam Dundas I will leave your house for ever," the subject dropped by
mutual consent, but it was none the less a living barrier between them
because raised and maintained in silence.

"Oh, these girls! these wicked girls!" Mrs. Corfield had said with a
mother's irrational anger when speaking of the circumstance to her
husband. "We bring up our boys only for them to take from us. As soon
as they begin to be some kind of