A man of Falconer’s narrow temperament, confirmed in his rigidity by many years of life, having his set conceptions suddenly overthrown and forcibly enlarged, will be totally incapable of any just appreciation of the new horizon then created; he will be conscious of the spaces about him only as confusing unrealities; the limitations solidified by the mental habits of years will retain some sort of ghostly influence over him long after they have ceased to have any actual existence. His first conscious and deliberate movement will be an instinctive attempt to reconcile the new condition of things with these old limitations, rather than to reconcile himself with the new conditions. The facts which Mrs. Romayne’s words recalled to him; the character of the man whom she had encouraged as her son’s chief intimate; the character of the life to which she had bred him; gave definite force to the vague movement towards such reconciliation already stirring in Falconer’s mind. He accepted the revelation of unsuspected mother’s love and mother’s dread, and ceased to contemplate it as he concentrated his mental vision on the selfish vanity and worldliness with which Mrs. Romayne had stood endued in his thoughts for twenty years; and as his point of view readjusted itself on these lines, her present position, with all the suffering which it involved, presented itself to him solely as the inevitable climax of a simple and eminently comprehensible sequence of cause and effect. His voice was low and stern as he said: “Can you not think of any other friend who could give us some clue to his recent movements?” “I can’t!” she cried, stopping in her rapid walk, and confronting him fiercely. “It is because there is no one left; because I don’t know what to do, or where to turn, that I have come to you! Should I be wasting time like this if I could think of any other means of acting? I’m tied hand and foot in the dark--tied to the rack, man! We can do nothing till we find him--till we know what has happened. Think, think, think! How are we to find him? How are we to----” Her voice, which had risen into an agonised cry, broke suddenly; a greyish tint spread itself over her face, and all her features were contorted as if with horrible physical pain. She stretched out her hand feebly and gropingly, caught at an arm-chair, and fell into it, letting her face fall forward on its back as her nails pressed themselves pitilessly into her thin hands. “It--it’s nothing!” she gasped, in a tight, suppressed voice, fighting desperately, as it seemed, to utter words rather than groans. “I have been ill! The night----”