His rage and bitterness had vanished, as though by magic; her tone and touch had spirited them away. "Perhaps I do, dear. Go to bed, and dream of one. You must be very tired. I ought not to say that I am glad to see you back, Dick; yet how can I help it?" CHAPTER X. OVER THE EMBERS. It was one of the peculiarities of Jane Yorke that she took but little sleep. The household had long retired, and she put the remains of her son's meal away with her own hands, then sat down by the fire, thinking. She had more subject for thought than most women; her life had been eventful, her experience strange. We know what her second husband--the man who repudiated her and her child--had been and was. Her first husband had been scarcely less remarkable. Leonard Yorke was a young man of respectable family, and of tolerable means. His parents were dead, and his relatives and himself had parted company early. They were sober, steady people, connected with the iron trade: a share in their house of business at Birmingham, carried on in the name of his two uncles, was the only tie between him and them, save that of kinship. They were strong Unitarians, strong political economists, strong in their rugged material fashion every way. They did not know what to do with a nephew who was a religious zealot, and thought all the world was out of joint; and they had characteristically sought for assistance in the advertising columns of the _Times_. Mr. Hardcastle therein proclaimed himself as having a specialty for the reduction and reform of intractable young gentlemen, and they had consigned Leonard to his establishment. It was the best thing that they could think of--for they were genuinely conscientious men--and they did not grudge the money, though the tutor's terms were high. Jane was then a very young girl--so young, indeed, that parents and guardians would scarcely have taken alarm had they been aware of her being beneath the same roof with their impressionable charges; and she was childish-looking even for her tender years. Leonard Yorke, gentle and good-humored, was moved with compassion toward the orphan girl, as guileless-eyed as a saint in a picture; he pitied her poverty, and, still more, the worldly character of her uncle and her surroundings. She was wholly ignorant of the spiritual matters which engrossed his being, and yet so willing to be taught. She sat at his feet, and listened by the hour to the outpourings of his fervid zeal. If she did not understand them, she was in no worse position than himself. His tongue was fluent. His words were like a lambent flame, playing with some indestructible material. His mind was weak, and devoted to metaphysical speculations--mysticisms: the _arcana coelestia_ of Swedenborg was Holy Writ to him. He believed in three heavens, and their opposites. Jane's endeavors were directed to make him believe in a fourth heaven. Childlike and immature in appearance, she was in character exceedingly precocious.