espect to
her in whom experience was not lacking. He had never, so he told
himself, quite understood how fine a lady his mother was, how
conspicuous was her charm and distinguished her intelligence. And he
clung to her, grown man though he was, even as a child, entering a
bright room full of guests, clings to its mother's hand, finding
therein much comfort of encouragement and support. He desired she
should share all his interests, reckoning nothing worth the doing in
which she had not a part. He consulted her before each undertaking,
talked and laughed over it with her in private afterwards, thereby
unconsciously securing to her halcyon days, a honeymoon of the heart of
infinite sweetness, so that she, on her part, thanked God and took
courage.

And, indeed, it might very well appear to Katherine that her heroic
remedy was on the road to work an effectual cure. The terror of lawless
passion and of evil, provoked by that fair woman clothed as with the
sea waves, crowned and shod with gold, whom she had withstood so
manfully in spirit in the wild autumn night, departed from her. She
began to fear no more. For surely her son was wholly given back to
her--his heart still free, his life still innocent? And, not only did
this terror depart, but her anguish at his deformity was strangely
lessened, the pain of it lulled as by the action of an anodyne. For,
witnessing the young man's popularity, seeing him so universally
courted and welcomed, observing his manifest power of attraction, she
began to ask herself whether she had not exaggerated the misfortune of
that same deformity and the impediment that it offered to his career
and chances of personal happiness. She had been morbid, hypersensitive.
The world evidently saw in his disfigurement no such horror and
hopeless bar to success as she had seen. It was therefore a dear world,
a world rich in consolation and promise. It smiled upon Richard, and so
she smiled upon it, gratefully, trustfully, finding in the plenitude of
her thankfulness no wares save honest ones set out for sale in the
booths of Vanity Fair. A large hopefulness arose in her. She began to
form projects calculated, as she believed, to perpetuate the gladness
of the present.

Among other tender customs of Richard's boyhood into which Katherine,
at this happy period, drifted back was that of going, now and again, to
his room at night, and gossiping with him, for a merry, yet somewhat
pathetic half-hour, before