Only the exceptional man or woman bears the strain of a great shame and sorrow with no outside help. Mrs. Farquharson’s pride in her son went side by side with ceaseless fear. Richard’s fatal likeness to her dead firstborn, dearer far than Richard because he was the child of early wifehood, stabbed her heart. She had loved that child too well; forgetfulness of God by the mother had been visited by God upon the son, she told herself. And to watch another pay the price of your own sin is sin’s most bitter penalty. In Douglas Farquharson’s case, there had been that sudden extraordinary return to a vicious type which occurs occasionally in a family that has for centuries bred fine men and fair women. When, page by page, after his death the record that proved his guilt was spelled out by his mother, the only plea she could urge in his defence was that the selfishness of her own love, given to man instead of God, had marred and distorted the human image by its very fervour. She had "counted it a glory to make vain things." Her care had been, like the potter, "to strive with the goldsmiths and silversmiths." The voices of husband and child had made such triumphant music in her ears, that God’s sublime call was drowned; she had bartered Heaven for a brief hour of human rapture, to find that God was a God of vengeance as well as love and love a two-edged sword which can wound or kill. That very night, on her bedroom wall, she thought she saw a warning written in letters of flame. "His heart is ashes and his hope vain earth, his life more base than clay." ... "Being himself mortal, he fashioneth a dead thing with his hands." Day after day, as Richard grew stronger and more handsome, she asked herself if he were born only to inherit his brother’s legacy of dishonour. He looked frank and open enough, but eyes that shone as purely as his had been the casket of lies, and lips which had met hers more easily had given themselves to what was incredibly base. The dead are often nearer to us than the living. Mrs. Farquharson’s dead were scourges. When Douglas killed himself the shock broke his father’s heart. By day and night his mother made silent pilgrimage to two lonely graves.