“It is a pull,” said her visitor. “Yes, it is a pull. A man does not know what it is till he has gone through it. Often you think, poor things, it is better for them; you would never have been able to rear them as you ought; but when it comes it is a pull; though you may have no bread to give them, it is hard to part with them.” He had begun to eat his breakfast very composedly, notwithstanding this. The way he held his fork was a wonder to Marie who had but recently acquired full mastery of her own, and Harry had watched with great gravity and interest the passage of the stranger’s knife to his mouth. But Lady Markham no longer noticed these things. She forgot that he was like the man that wound up the clocks. “I always feel,” she said, “when I hear of losses like yours as if I ought to go down on my knees and beg your pardon for being so much better off--thank God!” Spears looked up at her suddenly, putting down his knife and fork. Here was a strange thing; while all the rest were so conscious of the difference between them, the two chief persons had forgotten it. But he did not make any immediate reply. He looked at her wondering, grateful, understanding; and that piece of silent conversation was more effective than anything that could be said. “There are not many people that feel like you,” he said at length; “those that are better off than their neighbours are apt to look as if it sprang from some virtue of theirs. They are more likely to crow over us than to beg our pardon. And just as well too, Markham,” he said with a laugh. “If they were all like your mother, they’d cut the ground from under our feet.” “I do not see that,” said Paul. “The principle is unaltered, however well-intentioned those may be who are in the position of unjust superiority; that makes no difference so far as I can see.” All the Markham family were roused to attention when Paul spoke. The children looked at him, stopping their private chatter, and Lady Markham cast a wondering, reproachful look at her boy. Was she in a position of unjust superiority because all her children were living, and another parent had lost the half of his? She felt wounded by this strange speech. “Ah,” said Spears, with a twinkle in his eyes, “there is nothing like a recruit from the other side for going the whole----. You have a beautiful family, and you have a beautiful park, my lady. You have got a great deal more than the most of your fellow-creatures have. I can do nothing but stand and wonder at it for my part. Everything you see, everything you touch, is beautiful. You ought to be very sorry for all the others, so many of them, who are not so well off as you.” “Indeed I am, Mr. Spears,” said Lady Markham, simply; but then she added, after a pause, “for those who have not the things that give happiness; but there are a great many things that are of no importance to happiness. Everybody, of course, cannot have a beautiful park, as you say, and a nice house; but----”