d to throw the blame on her; he
did, himself. My dear, it was his cowardice and treachery that made me
hate him. You are shocked at that?"

"No--at least, I mean, I don't believe you meant it."

"I meant it at the time, my dear. And I counted him as dead, and tried
to forget him. But it is hard for a mother to forget her son."

"I should have thought so." Gwen was not quite happy about old Mrs.
Picture's inner soul. How about a possible cruel corner in it?

The old lady seemed to suspect this question's existence, unexpressed.
Apology in her voice hinted at need of forgiveness--pleaded against
condemnation. "But," she said, after a faltered word or two, short of
speech, "you do not know, my dear, how bad a man can be. How should
you?"

Perhaps the tone of her voice threw a light on some obscurity accepted
ambiguities had left. For Gwen said, rather suddenly: "You need not tell
me any more. You have told me plenty and I understand it." And so she
did, for working purposes, though perhaps some latitudes in the sea of
this Ralph Daverill's iniquities were by her unexplored and
unexplorable.

This particular atrocity of his has no interest for the story, beyond
the fact that it was the one that led to his separation from his mother,
and that it accounts for the very slight knowledge that she seems to
have had of the details of his conviction and deportation. It must have
happened between his desertion of his lawful wife, Dave's Aunt M'riar,
and his ill-advised attempt at burglary. Whether his offence against
"the girl" whose part his mother took was made the subject of a criminal
indictment is not certain, but if it was he must have escaped with a
slight punishment, to be able to give his attention to the strong room
of that Bank so soon after. Those who are inclined to think that his
mother was unforgiving towards her own son, to the extent of
vindictiveness, may find an excuse for her in a surmise which some facts
connected with the case made plausible, that he adduced some childish
levities on this girl's part as a warrant for his atrocious behaviour
towards her, and so escaped legal penalty. Those who know with what
alacrity male jurymen will accept evasions of this sort, will admit that
this is at least possible.

This is conjecture, by the way, as Gwen asked to know no more of the
incident, seeming to shrink from further knowledge of it in fact. She
allowed it to pass out of the conversation, retaining the ple