ge havoc with its beauty, and yet
the lines had been laid on with no harsh hand. There was a certain
dignity which it had never lost, which indeed resigned and large-minded
sadness only enhances, and her simple religious life had given a touch
of spirituality to those thin, delicate features so exquisitely carved
and moulded. The bloom had gone from her cheeks for ever, and their
intense pallor was almost deathlike, matching very nearly her snow-white
hair, but her eyes seemed to have retained much of their old power and
sweetness, and the light which sometimes flashed in them lent her face a
peculiar charm. But now they were full of a deep anxiety as she lay
there, a restless disquiet which showed itself also in her nervously
twitching fingers.

Far away down the valley the little convent clock struck the hour, and
at its sound she looked up at him.

"You go at nine o'clock, Bernard?"

"At nine o'clock, mother, unless you wish me to stay."

She shook her head.

"No, I shall be better alone. This thing will crush me into the grave,
but death will be very welcome. Oh, my son, my son, that the sin of one
weak woman should have given birth to all this misery!"

He stooped over her, and held her thin fingers in his strong man's hand.

"Do not trouble about it, mother," he said. "I can bear my share. Try
and forget it."

Her eyes flashed strangely, and her lips parted in a smile which was no
smile.

"Forget it! That is a strange speech, Bernard. Have I the power to
beckon to those hills yonder, and bid them bow their everlasting heads?
Can I put back the hand of time, and live my life over again? Even so
futile is my power over memory. It is my penance, and I pray day and
night for strength to bear it."

Her voice died away with a little break, and there was silence. Soon she
spoke again.

"Tell me--something about her, Bernard."

His face changed, but it was only a passing glow, almost as though one
of those long level rays of sunlight had glanced for a moment across his
features.

"She is good and beautiful, and all that a woman should be," he
whispered.

"Does she know?"

He shook his head.

"She trusts me."

"Then you will be happy?" she asked eagerly. "Happy even if the worst
come! Time will wipe out the memory."

He turned away with a dull sickening pain at his heart. The worst he had
not told her. How could he? How could he add another to her sorrows by
telling her of the peril in which he st