When Mr. Ford’s client obeyed his father’s summons, the climax of his difficulties seemed at hand. The old man was anxious for a reconciliation, but resolved that his son should “settle in life;” and he had found a wife for him, the daughter of a Scotch nobleman, young, handsome, and with a good fortune. He gave him a fortnight for consideration. If he complied, the old man promised to pay his debts, to make him a liberal allowance, and to be in every way indulgent. If he thwarted his plans, he threatened to allow him nothing during his lifetime, and to leave him nothing that he could avoid bequeathing at his death. It was at this juncture that Jan’s mother followed her husband to England. Her anxieties were not silenced by excuses which satisfied her father. The crisis could hardly have been worse. Mr. Ford’s client felt that confession was now inevitable; and that he could confess more easily by letter when he reached London. But before the letter was written, his wife died. Weak men, harassed by personal anxieties, become hard in proportion to their selfish fears. It is like the cruelty that comes of terror. He had loved his wife; but he was terribly pressed, and there came a sense of relief even with the bitterness of the knowledge that he was free. He took the body to Holland, to be buried under the shadow of the little wooden church where they were married; and to the desolate old father he promised to bring his grandson—Jan. But just after the death of an old nurse, in whose care he had placed his child, another crisis came to Mr. Ford’s client. On the same day he got letters from his father and from his father-in-law. From the first, to press his instant return home; from the second, to say that, if he could not at once bring Jan, the old man would make the effort of a voyage to England to fetch him. Jan’s father almost hated him. That the child should have lived when the beloved mother died was in itself an offence. But that that freedom, and peace, and prosperity, which were so dearly purchased by her death, should be risked afresh by him, was irritating to a degree. He was frantic. It was impossible to fail that very peremptory old gentleman, his father. It was out of the question to allow his father-in-law to come to England. He could not throw away all his prospects. And the more he thought of it, the more certain it seemed that Jan’s existence would for ever tie him to Holland; that for his grandson’s sake the old man would investigate his affairs, and that the truth would come out sooner or later. The very devil suggested to him that if the child had died with its mother he would have been quite free, and intercourse with Holland would have died away naturally. He wished to forget. To a nature of his type, when even such a love as he had been privileged to enjoy had become a memory involving pain, it was instinctively evaded like any other unpleasant thing. He resolved, at last, to let nothing