And under cover of the dying mother’s name, the judge vailed his own emotions of softening toward Everard, whose heart was lighter and happier than it had been since that night when Matthewson’s voice had said, “I pronounce you man and wife.” And he would be a man worthy of the wife, and his mother should live to see it, and to see Josephine, too, and love her as a daughter. She was not dying; she must not die, when he needed and loved her so much, he thought, as, at a word from Rosamond, he went to the sick room where his mother lay. What a sweet, dainty little woman she was, with such a lovely expression on the exquisitely chiseled features, and how the soft brown eyes, so like the son’s, brightened at the sight of her boy, who did not shrink from her as he did from his father. She knew all his faults, and that under them there was a noble, manly nature, and she loved him so much. “Oh, Everard!” she cried, “I am so glad you have come. I feared once I should never see you again.” He had his arms around her, and was kissing her white face, which, for the moment, glowed with what seemed to be the hue of health, and so misled him into thinking her better than she was. “Now that I have come, mother, you will be well again,” he said, hanging fondly over her, and looking into the dear face which had never worn a frown for him. “No, Everard,” she said, as her wasted fingers threaded his luxuriant hair, “I shall never be well again. It’s only now a matter of time; a few days or weeks at the most, and I shall be gone from here forever, to that better home, where I pray Heaven you will one day meet me. Hush, hush, my child; don’t cry like that,” she added, soothingly, for, struck with the expression on her white, pinched face, from which all the color had faded, and which told him the truth more forcibly than she had done, Everard had felt suddenly that his mother was going from him, and nothing in all the wide world could ever fill her place.