"All the dreadful things I ever imagined came true. When he sits at the piano, he looks like Basil. It's something in them, it--Hark!" Dr. Lister sprang up and went to the door. As he opened it the wind set the flame of the lamps quivering. There was a shrill, wailing sound. "What is it?" cried Mrs. Lister. "Nothing but the wind," answered Dr. Lister, his own nerves badly shaken. He came back into the study. "Mrs. Scott exaggerates till she lies. Suppose he has gone there to play for a few hours! They are both pupils of Thomasina's." "Thomasina's ideas are all wrong--about _everything_," said Mrs. Lister. "She never had a brother or a child, she has had no experience. She puts a higher value on talent than on the Ten Commandments. Where _is_ Richard?" She sprang up. Her cry was lost in the breaking of the storm. "This very house is rocking!" Dr. Lister drew her down once more beside him. "At this moment we can do nothing but wait." "I've gone through this misery before," said she piteously. "It isn't new to me." Dr. Lister tried to persuade her to lie down, but she would not stir. The storm reached a climax, seemed to recede, and advanced in greater fury. Silently, hand in hand, the two waited. CHAPTER XV EXPLANATIONS By midnight, when the fury of the storm had abated, there was still no Richard. Mrs. Lister would not hear of going to bed, but sat stiffly upon the sofa in the study or wandered through the house. With a candle she explored the third story, venturing even into the tank room where the dim light cast flickering shadows on the brown unfinished walls and ceiling. She remembered with horror the old story of the bride locked into a chest and found mouldering after many years, and a more recent and sentimental tale of a young woman, who, discovering that she was merely the foster child of her parents, fell fainting to the floor before the old trunk into which she had been prying, and there remained until she was accidentally stumbled upon. Mrs. Lister did not climb the projecting beam and look into the tank--that madness she forbade herself. She went into Richard's room and opened distractedly the cupboard door, then laid back the covers on the bed as she had always laid back Richard's covers, every night of his life. As Dr. Lister sat beside her, he heard the whole story of Basil Everman, and his first puritanic disapproval of Basil's course gave place to protesting amazement. "Something within him seemed to impel him to do wrong things," said Mrs. Lister. "It wasn't that he didn't love us. I am convinced that he loved us dearly. _But he had to have his own way!_" "'_Had to have his own way!_'" Dr. Lister repeated the words to himself. His own way, which led him to "Roses of Pæstum" and "Bitter Bread"! If they had only let him have his own way, unmolested, or had helped him to it, poor Basil might not have turned into this unpleasant by-path.