iven time and a sympathetic listener.
"Yes, my dear, I hope so. For what is his life to him--my son--if he is
alive? The best I can think of for him, is that he is long dead."

"Was he mad or bad?"

"Both, I hope. Perhaps only mad. Then he would be neither bad nor good.
But he was lost for me, and we were well apart: before he was"--she
hesitated--"sent away...."

"Sent away! Yes--where?"

"I ought not to tell you this ... but will you promise me?..."

"To tell no one? Yes--I promise."

"I know you will keep your promise." The old lady kept on looking into
the beautiful eyes fixed on hers, still caressing the hand she held, and
said, after a few moments' silence:--"He was sent to penal servitude,
not under his own name. They said his name was ... some short name ...
at the trial. That was at Bristol." Then, after another pause, as though
she had read Gwen's thoughts in her scared, speechless face:--"It was
all right. He deserved his sentence."

"Oh, I am so glad!" Gwen was quite relieved. "I was afraid he was
innocent. I thought he could not be guilty, because of you. But was he
really wicked--_bad_, I mean--as well as legally guilty?"

"I like to hope that he was mad. The offence that sent him to Norfolk
Island was scarcely a wicked one. It was only burglary, and it was a
Bank." The old face looked forgiving over this, but set itself in lines
of fixed anger as she added:--"It was not like the thing that parted
us."

"You wish not to tell me that?"

"My dear, it is not a thing for you to hear." The gentleness of the
speaker averted the storm of indignation and contempt which similar
expressions of the correctitudes had more than once excited in this
rebellious young lady.

But Gwen felt at liberty to laugh a little at them, or could not resist
the temptation to do so. "Oh dear!" she cried. "Am I a new-born baby, to
be kept packed in cotton-wool, and not allowed to hear this and hear
that? Do, dear Mrs. Picture--you don't mind my calling you by Dave's
name?--do tell me what it was that parted you and your son. _I_ shall
understand you. I'm not Mary that had a little lamb."

"Well, my dear, when I was about your age, before I was married, I'm not
at all sure that _I_ should have understood. Perhaps that is really the
reason why I took the girl's part...."

"Why you took the girl's part?" said Gwen, who had _not_ understood, so
far, and was puzzled at the expression.

"Yes. I believed her story. They trie