It is possible that a good deal of Mr. Carruthers's trouble--and he had suffered severely since he had left England--had had its origin in a conviction, which had stolen upon him at first, and latterly had threatened to overwhelm him, that he had not been faultless in his conduct towards his wife and his treatment of her son. He had found out very shortly after they had left Poynings--for in the deadening of her faculties, forgetfulness of her fear of him had come--how mistaken he had been in supposing that he had suppressed her love for George, her constant remembrance of him, or had supplied by all he had given her for the boon he had withheld. In her placid way, when she would sit for hours talking softly to herself, his wife had administered some very telling lessons to Mr. Carruthers. It was with an uneasy surprise that he came to feel how very dear she was to him, how indispensable to his life, how strangely the things which had held the first places in his estimation, behind which he had ranked her, and she had been content humbly to follow, fell away into complete insignificance. He actually forgot Poynings at times, and was not worried by fears that the lawn was not properly mown and smoothly rolled, or by visions of fallen leaves lying about in the sacred places. His "business papers" were duly forwarded to him, but they did not interest him much; his mind dwelt almost entirely on his wife's state, and he was rapidly passing, as might be expected from a man whose moral perceptions had been suddenly awakened and enlarged, from the recognition of his true share of blame in the calamity which had befallen them, to an exaggeration of that share, which rendered him almost oblivious of the provocation he had received. Had George Dallas suddenly appeared before his stepfather at Poynings, he might not have been well received; the influences of old habits, and associations, in the sense of the promulgation of the old edict of banishment, might have successfully overpowered the new influences striving with pride and obstinacy in the by no means bad heart of Mr. Carruthers. But the occasion had been most auspicious. Here, in a foreign place, where Mr. Carruthers was positively oppressed with a sense of strangeness, and where no one was present to know anything about the concession he was making, he had but trifling difficulties to overcome, and the meeting between the three gentlemen had been kindly, unreserved, and cordial.