The idea was with her still as she sat rather silent at the dinner-table that evening. They had a little party, for all the Raymores joined them, and young Mallam was there also, their guest for the night. Christine was very gay and satirical. John watched her with ready admiration, but less ready understanding. The young men were rather noisy, toasting to-morrow's wedding to the confusion of the bridegroom and the equal confusion of Eva Raymore, to whose not distant destiny both Jeremy's words and Jeremy's eyes made references by no means covert. Kate Raymore and her husband looked on with the subdued and tempered happiness which was the outcome of their great sorrow, their triumph over it, and the impending departure of their son, to complete the working out of his atonement. They talked of the Selfords with some irony, of poor Harriet Courtland, of Tom and his children with a sympathetic hopefulness and a touch of amusement at the importance their dear old Suzette Bligh was assuming and was, it seemed, to assume in the household. Sibylla's own thoughts widened the survey, embracing in it the couple down at Old Mill House--the faithful patient woman whose love made even the ridiculous touching; the broken old man who had given the best of his life in expiation for a brief madness, and now crept home to end his days, asking nothing but peace, hoping at best not to be despised or shunned. Above in his cot lay her little son, at the other end of the scale, at the beginning of all things; and opposite to her was Grantley himself, unbroken, but not unchanged; obedient to the lessons, but never put out of heart by them; doing violence to what he had held most truly and most preciously himself in order to the search and discovery of something more true and precious still. The idea of the ever-passing years and of feelings and fortunes appropriate to each stage of life helped her, but was not enough. There were differences of minds too, of tempers and of views; and every one of them implied a fitting in, perhaps a paring away here or an addition there--a harmonising; these things must be if the system was to work. Reluctantly and gradually her ardent mind, by nature ever either buoyant in the heaven of assured hope or cast down to the depths of despair, bowed to the middle conclusion, and consented to look through the eyes of wisdom and experience. Happy he who can so look and yet look without bitterness, who can see calamity without despair, and accept partial success without peevishness. There were the hopeless cases. These must be explained, or left unexplained, by what creed or philosophy you chose to hold. There were--surely there were!--the few perfect ones, where there was not even danger nor the need for effort or for guard. Of such she had deemed hers one. It had needed much to open her eyes--much sorrow and wrong in her own life--much sorrow, wrong, and calamity in the lives which passed within her view. But her eyes were open now.