"He's thirty-three years old," she cried, "an' I've never seen the day when he's give me a hurt. He's been the pride of my life an' the hope of it. I've looked up to him and prayed for him an' believed in him--an' they say he's black with shameful sin--an' I don't know him, nor never did, for he's deceived me from first to last." The yellow hyacinths fell from Miss Ffrench's hand on the carpet, and she looked down at them instead of at the upturned face. "Who said it?" she asked. But she was not answered. "If it's true--not that I believe it, for I don't--if it's true, what is there left for me, as loved and honored him--where's my son as paid me for all I bore? He's never been--he's never been at all. I've never been his mother nor he's never been my son. If it's true--not as I believe it, for I don't--where is he?" Miss Ffrench bent down and picked up her hyacinths. She wondered, as she bent down, what her reply would be. "Will you believe _me_?" she asked, as she rose up again. "Yes, ma'am," she was answered, "I know I may do it--thank God!" "Yes, you may," said Miss Ffrench, without flinching in the least. "I can have no feeling for or against him. I can have no end to serve, one way or the other. It is not true. It is a lie. He is all you have believed." She helped her to rise, and made her sit down again in an easy-chair, and then herself withdrew a little, and stood leaning against the window looking at her. "He has done more good in Broxton than any other man who lives," she said. "He has made it what it is. The people who hate him and speak ill of him are those he has benefited most. It is the way of their class, I have heard before, and now I believe it to be true. They have said worse things of men who deserve them as little as he does. He has enemies whom he has conquered, and they will never forgive him." She discovered a good many things to say, having once begun, and she actually found a kind of epicurean enjoyment in saying them in a manner the most telling. She always liked to do a thing very well. But, notwithstanding this, the time seemed rather long before she was left alone to think the matter over. Before she had said many words her visitor was another woman. Life's color came back to her, and she sat crying softly, tears of sheer joy and relief. "I knowed it couldn't be true," she said. "I knowed it, an' oh! thank you, ma'am, with all a mother's heart! "To think," she said, smiling and sobbing, "as I should have been so wicked as to let it weigh on me, when I knowed so well as it couldn't never be. I should be almost 'shamed to look him in the face if I didn't know how good he was, an' how ready he'd be to forgive me." When at last she was gone, Miss Ffrench threw herself into the chair she had left, rather languidly. She was positively tired.