but otherwise there was no
difference. There was still the cold expression--which was ever the
same, except when her eyes rested on Wilfred--still the same stately
carriage.

She glanced at me for a second, and then asked my business.

"Mother," I said, standing up.

She looked at me keenly for a few seconds, then she cried hoarsely, "My
God, what brought you here?"

"Mother, forgive me," I said.

I thought she recoiled from me as if in abhorrence. I know that she
stepped back from me.

"Why have you come?" she said, and I saw fierce hate gleaming from her
eyes. "Have you not caused misery enough? Are you not content with
the lives you have poisoned? You went away; why did you ever come
back?"

"I could not rest, mother," I said, humbly, for I felt I deserved her
reproach. "I wanted to tell you all; I wanted your forgiveness."

"Tell me!" she cried, "as though I did not know. Forgive you, how can
I forgive you when but for you my boy might have been----"

"Let me tell you everything, mother," I cried. "God knows I have
suffered much for what I have done, but He has forgiven me, and I
wanted your forgiveness before I die."

"Do I not know? Have I not heard?" she went on. "Has it not been the
talk of the neighbourhood? Have you not ever been my son's enemy?
When you were children it was you who had your father's affections, it
was you who saved the life of the only one my Wilfred loved, it was you
who stood between Wilfred and his right position. It was you who kept
Ruth from loving him, and although you went away you were ever the
black blot on his life. And now you have come back again. Why? To
breathe more poison, to carry out more of your murderous designs."

"No, mother, I have come to atone for the wrong I have done rather than
to do more wrong."

"That can never be. You can never atone for the wrong you have done.
You were born to curse my son's life, and you have done it. You have
stripped my life of happiness, and now you come again, to take away
what paltry right, I suppose, you claim."

"But, mother!"

"Call me not 'mother,' you are no son of mine."

"Not your son!" I cried, "how can that be?"

She did not answer me, and my memory flashed back to the time when
Deborah Teague had hinted that she was not my mother. Now her mad
jealousy of my position was explained. Now I knew why Wilfred was all
and I was nothing. This woman was not my mother, and as a consequence
true af