? Or when saw we
thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer
and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it
unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

The words were given out by Julius March, not only with an exquisite
distinctness of enunciation, but with a ring of assurance, of
sustaining and thankful conviction. Richard leaned back in his stall
again, looking across at his mother. While Honoria, taken with a
sensitive fear of inquiring into matters not rightfully hers to inquire
into, hastily turned her eyes upon her open prayer-book. They must have
many things to say to one another, that mother and son, as she divined,
to-day,--far be it from her to attempt to surprise their confidence!

She rose from her knees, cutting her final petitions somewhat short,
directly the last of the men-servants had filed out of the chapel, and,
crossing the Chapel-Room, a tall, pale figure in her trailing, white,
evening dress, she pulled back the curtain of the oriel window, opened
one of the curved, many-paned casements and looked out. She was
curiously moved, very sensible of a deeper drama going forward around
her, going forward in her own thought--subtly modifying and transmuting
it--than she could at present either explain or place. The night was
cloudy and very mild. A soft, sobbing, westerly wind, with the smell of
coming rain in it, saluted her as she opened the casement. The last of
the frost must be gone, by now, even in the hollows--the snow wholly
departed also. The spring, though young and feeble yet, puling like
some ailing baby-child in the voice of that softly-complaining,
westerly wind, was here, very really present at last. Honoria leaned
her elbows on the stone window-ledge. Her heart went out in strong
emotion of tenderness towards that moist wind which seemed to cry, as
in a certain homelessness, against her bare arms and bare
neck.--"Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these my
brethren----"

But just then Katherine Calmady called to her, and that in a sweet, if
rather anxious, tone.

"Honoria, dear child, come here," she said. "Richard is putting me
through the longer catechism regarding those heath fires in August
year, and the state of the woods."

Then, as the young lady approached her, Lady Calmady laid one hand on
her arm, looking up in quick and loving appeal at the serious and
slightly troubled face.

"My an