Although Mrs. Arnot did not intend it, there was a slight constraint in her voice and manner as she replied: "Yes, I took especial pains to see her before I returned, and went out of my way to do so. I wished to assure her how well you were doing, and how certain you were to retrieve the past, all of which, of course, she was very glad to hear." "Did she send me no message?" he asked, instinctively feeling that something was wrong. "She said that she wrote to you regularly, and so, of course, felt that there was no need of sending any verbal messages." "Was she not cordial to you?" asked the young man, with a dark frown. "She was very polite, Egbert. I think she misunderstands me a little." His lace flushed with indignation, and after a moment's thought he said bitterly, and with something like contempt, "Poor mother! she is to be pitied." Mrs. Arnot's face became very grave, and almost severe, and she replied, with an emphasis which he never forgot: "She is to be loved; she is to be cherished with the most delicate consideration and forbearance, and honored--yes, honored--because she is your mother. You, as her son, should never say, nor permit any one to say a word against her. Nothing can absolve you from this sacred duty. Remember this as you hope to be a true man." This was Mrs. Arnot's return for the small jealousy of her girlhood's friend. He bowed his head, and after a moment replied: "Mrs. Arnot, I feel, I know, you are right. I thank you." "Now you are my knight again," she said, her face suddenly lighting up. "But come; let us join the others, for they seem to have hit upon a very mirthful and animated discussion." Laura's eye and sympathies took them in at once as they approached, and enveloped them in the genial and magnetic influences which she seemed to have the power of exerting. Although naturally and deeply interested in his interview with Mrs. Arnot, Haldane's eyes and thoughts had been drawn frequently and irresistibly to the object of his old-time passion. She was, indeed, very different from what he had expected. The diffident maiden, so slight in form and shy in manner, had not developed into a drooping lily of a woman, suggesting that she must always have a manly support of some kind near at hand. Still less had she become a typical belle, and the aggressive society girl who captures and amuses herself with her male admirers with the grace and sang froid of a sportive kitten that carefully keeps a hapless mouse within reach of her velvet paw. The pale and saint-like image which he had so long enshrined within his heart, and which had been created by her devotion to her mother, also faded utterly away in the presence of the reality before him. She was a veritable flesh-and-blood woman, with the hue of health upon her cheek, and the charm of artistic beauty in her rounded form and graceful manner. She was a revelation to him, transcending not only all that he had seen, but all that he had imagined.