it might soften, but soften at last it did. And
so he built up in his soul the image of a grave, sweet saint, kindly and
gentle-voiced, unapproachable, not to be profaned. To this image--ah,
which of us has not had such a shrine!--he brought in secret the homage
of his life, his confessions, his despairs, his hopes, his resolutions;
guiding thereby all his life, as well as poor mortal man may do, failing
ever of his own standards, as all men do, yet harking ever back to that
secret sibyl, reckoning all things from her, for her, by her.

There came at length one chastened hour when they met in calmness, when
there was no longer talk of love between them, when he stood before her
as though indeed at the altar of some marble deity. Always her answer
had been that the past had been a mistake; that she had professed to
love a man, not knowing what that man was; that she had suffered, but
that it was better so, since it had brought understanding. Now, in this
calmer time, she begged of him knowledge of this child, regretting the
wandering life which had been its portion, saying that for Mary Connynge
she no longer felt horror and hatred. Thus it was that in a hasty moment
Law had impulsively begged her to assume some sort of tutelage over that
unfortunate child. It was to his own amazement that he heard Lady
Catharine Knollys consent, stipulating that the child should be placed
in a Paris convent for two years, and that for two years John Law should
see neither his daughter nor herself. Obedient as a child himself he had
promised.

"Now, go away," she then had said to him. "Go your own way. Drink,
dice, game, and waste the talents God hath given you. You have made ruin
enough for all of us. I would only that it may not run so far as to
another generation."

So both had kept their promises; and now the two years were done, years
spent by Law more manfully than any of his life. His fortune he had
gathered together, amounting to more than a million livres. He had sent
once more for his brother Will, and thus the two had lived for some time
in company in lower Europe, the elder brother still curious as ever in
his abstruse theories of banking and finance--theories then new, now
outlived in great part, though fit to be called a portion of the great
foundation of the commercial system of the world. It was a wiser and
soberer and riper John Law, this man who had but recently received a
summons from Philippe of Orleans to be prese