he had said on this occasion. Ernest quickly recovered his
temper and again asked after his mother. Theobald was glad enough to
take this opening now, and replied at once in the tone he would have
assumed towards one he most particularly desired to conciliate, that she
was getting rapidly worse in spite of all he had been able to do for her,
and concluded by saying she had been the comfort and mainstay of his life
for more than thirty years, but that he could not wish it prolonged.

The pair then went upstairs to Christina's room, the one in which Ernest
had been born. His father went before him and prepared her for her son's
approach. The poor woman raised herself in bed as he came towards her,
and weeping as she flung her arms around him, cried: "Oh, I knew he would
come, I knew, I knew he could come."

Ernest broke down and wept as he had not done for years.

"Oh, my boy, my boy," she said as soon as she could recover her voice.
"Have you never really been near us for all these years? Ah, you do not
know how we have loved you and mourned over you, papa just as much as I
have. You know he shows his feelings less, but I can never tell you how
very, very deeply he has felt for you. Sometimes at night I have thought
I have heard footsteps in the garden, and have got quietly out of bed
lest I should wake him, and gone to the window to look out, but there has
been only dark or the greyness of the morning, and I have gone crying
back to bed again. Still I think you have been near us though you were
too proud to let us know--and now at last I have you in my arms once
more, my dearest, dearest boy."

How cruel, how infamously unfeeling Ernest thought he had been.

"Mother," he said, "forgive me--the fault was mine, I ought not to have
been so hard; I was wrong, very wrong"; the poor blubbering fellow meant
what he said, and his heart yearned to his mother as he had never thought
that it could yearn again. "But have you never," she continued, "come
although it was in the dark and we did not know it--oh, let me think that
you have not been so cruel as we have thought you. Tell me that you came
if only to comfort me and make me happier."

Ernest was ready. "I had no money to come with, mother, till just
lately."

This was an excuse Christina could understand and make allowance for;
"Oh, then you would have come, and I will take the will for the deed--and
now that I have you safe again, say that you will never,