had not been allowed to enter his wife's room, Juliet had to be
kept very quiet, lest the haemorrhage should return. He was almost glad
of the respite; he dreaded the meeting, and he was anxious to bestow all
his time upon his mother. Janetta had told him something about what had
passed; he had heard an outline, but only an outline, of the sad story,
and it must be confessed that as yet he could not understand it. It was
perhaps difficult for a man to fathom the depths of a woman's morbid
misery, or of a doating mother's passionate and unreasonable love. He
grieved, however, over what was somewhat incomprehensible to him, and he
thought once or twice with a sudden sense of comfort that Janetta would
explain, Janetta would make him understand. He looked round for her when
this idea occurred to him; but she was not in the room. She did not like
to intrude upon what might be the last interview between mother and son,
for she was firmly persuaded that Mrs. Brand would recover
consciousness, and would tell Wyvis in her own way something of what she
had thought and felt; but she was not far off, and when Wyvis sent her a
peremptory message to the effect that she was wanted, she came at once
and took up her position with him as watcher beside his mother's bed.

Janetta was right. Mrs. Brand's eyes opened at last, and rested on
Wyvis' face with a look of recognition. She smiled a little, and seemed
pleased that he was there. It was plain that for the moment she had
quite forgotten the events of the last few hours, and the first words
that she spoke proved that the immediate past had completely faded from
her mind.

"Wyvis!" she faltered. "Are you back again, dear? And is--is your father
with you?"

"I am here, mother," Wyvis answered. He could say nothing more.

"But your father----"

Then something--a gleam of reawakening memory--seemed to trouble her;
she looked round the room, knitted her brows anxiously, and murmured a
few words that Wyvis could not hear.

"I remember now," she said, in a stronger voice. "I wanted something--I
thought it was your father, but it was something quite different--I
wanted your forgiveness, Wyvis."

"Mother, mother, don't speak in that way," cried her son. "Have you not
suffered enough to expiate _any_ mistake?"

"Any mistake, perhaps, not any sin," said his mother feebly. "Now that I
am old and dying, I call things by their right names. I did you a wrong,
and I did Cuthbert a wrong, an