“Oh, John, did you not hear what that little thing said? She put the children against their mother. Amy will not let Russell come near her. If I have made a mistake, I meant it for the best. Russell is as miserable as any of us. Johnny has forgotten her, and Amy cannot endure the sight of her. And now it appears that coming to Bonport, which was your idea, is a failure too, though I am sure we both did it for the best.” “That is all that could be said for us if we were a couple of well-intentioned fools,” he cried. “And, indeed, we seem to have acted like fools in all that concerns the children,” he added, with a sort of bitterness. For what right had fate to lay such a burden upon him--him who had scrupulously preserved himself, or been preserved by Providence, from any such business of his own? “John,” said Mrs. Lennox, drying her eyes, “I don’t think there is so much to blame yourself about. You felt sure it would be better for them being here; and when you put it to me, so did I. You never thought of the lake. Why should you think of the lake? We never let them go near it without somebody to take care of them in the day, and how could any one suppose that at night--” Upon this her brother seized his hat and hurried from the house. The small aggravation seemed to fill up his cup so that he could bear no more, with this addition, that Mrs. Lennox’s soft purr of a voice roused mere exasperation in him, while his every thought of the children, even when the cares they brought threatened to overwhelm him, was tender with natural affection. But, in fact, wherever he turned at this moment he saw not a gleam of light, and there was a bitterness as of the deferred and unforeseen in this sudden gathering together of clouds and dangers which filled him almost with awe. The catastrophe itself had passed over much more quietly than could have been thought. But, lo, here, when no fear was, the misery came. His heart melted within him when he thought of Amy’s little pale face and that forlorn expedition in the stillness of the night to the side of the lake which betrayed, as nothing else could have done, the feverish working of her brain and the disturbance of her entire being. What madness of rage and jealousy must that have been that induced a man to leave this legacy of misery behind him to work in the minds of his little children years after he was dead! and what appalling cruelty and tyranny it was which made it possible for a dead man, upon whom neither argument nor proof could be brought to bear, thus to blight by a word so many lives! All had passed with a strange simplicity at first, and with such swift and silent carrying-out of the terrible conditions of the will that there had been no time to think if any expedient were possible. Looking back upon it, it seemed to him incredible that anything so extraordinary should have taken place with so little disturbance. _She_ had accepted her fate without a word, and every one else had accepted it.