rding her fixedly.

"I'm glad you have got on one of those white, frilly things you used to
wear. I always liked them."

Katherine could not speak just then. This sudden and complete intimacy
unnerved her. It was so long since any one had spoken to her thus. It
was very dear to her, yet the toneless voice gave a strange unreality
to the tender words.

"It's a matter for congratulation that you are the same," Richard went
on, "since everything else, it appears, is destined to continue the
same. One should have one thing it is agreeable to contemplate in that
connection, considering the vast number of things altogether the
reverse of agreeable which one fondly hoped one was rid of forever, and
which intrude themselves."

He shifted himself feebly on the pillows, and the flicker of a smile
crossed his face.

"Poor, dear mother," he said, "you see again, without delay, the old
bad habit of grumbling!"

"Grumble on, grumble on, my best beloved," Katherine murmured, while
her finger-tips traveled softly over his palm.

"Verily and indeed, you are the same!" Richard rejoined. Once more he
lay looking full at her, until she became almost abashed by that
unswerving scrutiny. It came over her that the plane of their relation
had changed. Richard was, as never heretofore, her equal, a man grown.

Suddenly he spoke.

"Can you forgive me?"

And so far had Katherine's thought journeyed from the past, so absorbed
was it in the present, that she answered, surprised:--

"My dearest, forgive what?"

"Injustice, ingratitude, desertion," Richard said, "neglect, systematic
cruelty. There is plenty to swell the list. All I boasted I would do I
have done--and more."--His voice, until now so even and emotionless,
faltered a little. "I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and
am no more worthy to be called thy son."

Katherine's hand closed down on his firmly.

"All that, as far as I am concerned, is as though it was not and never
had been," she answered.--"So much for judgment on earth,
dearest.--While in heaven, thank God, we know there is more joy over
the one sinner who repents than over the ninety-and-nine just persons
who need no repentance."

"And you really believe that?" Richard said, speaking half indulgently,
half ironically, as if to a child.

"Assuredly, I believe it."

"But supposing the sinner is not repentant, but merely cowed?"--Richard
straightened his head on the pillows and closed his eyes. "You