“What can she be after now?” thought Ralph, with some misgiving. “All this very effective get-up must have been done with a purpose. And her uncommonly cool tone! Rather a change from the oily manner she used to favour me with, though upon my word I think it’s an improvement. Can she be intending to try to pique me? No, she would never be so silly. Besides, they did not know I was coming to-night. I declare I believe she has got hold of some one else. How I pity the poor devil! All the same, from personal motives, I can’t refrain from wishing her success.” And half puzzled, half amused, he turned to his mother. “How well you are looking, Ralph!” broke from her involuntarily. And it was very true. For all that he was tired and travel-stained, for he had come in to see his mother before changing his clothes, the young man certainly looked his very best. There was a healthy brown flush under his somewhat sallow skin, which improved him vastly, and showed to advantage the dark, rather too deep set eyes, whose colour I never could succeed in defining. His figure, always lithe and sinewy, seemed to have gained in vigour and erectness. He looked both taller and stronger; his whole carriage told of greater heartiness and elasticity, a quicker and healthier flow of the life-blood in his veins. He looked pleased at the gratification involuntarily displayed in his mother’s tone, for till then her manner had chilled and perplexed him. She was more cordial than when he had left her, but she looked uneasy and depressed, and received him with the manner of one almost against her convictions, allowing to return to favour a but half-penitent culprit. Her “So you are back again, Ah, well!” had something rather piteous in its tone of reproach and resignation, but was, at the same time, exceedingly irritating. “Let bygones be bygones,” it seemed to say. “You have been an undutiful son, but I am the most magnanimous and long-suffering of mothers.” Underlying all this, however, was a different feeling, an evident anxiety as to his well-being, evinced by the heartiness of her exclamation as to his satisfactory looks. And besides this, he felt convinced she was concealing something which she believed would distress him; for, with all her worldly-mindedness and class prejudice, Lady Severn was the most transparent and honest-intentioned of women. He could not make it out, nor ask to have it explained; for, joined to his constitutional reserve, his mother and he were not, never had been, on such terms as to allow him frankly to beg her to confide to him the cause of her evident uneasiness. So they separated for the night. He, happy man, to forget all mysteries and misgivings in the thought of tomorrow’s meeting with Marion. Poor Ralph!