“Ye didna ken her, laddie,” she cried, “or ye wad never mint at layin yer tongue upon her that gait!—’Deed na, ye wadna!—But I doobt gien ever ye could hae come to ken her as she was—sic a bonny, herty sowl as ance dwalt in yon white-faced, patient thing, lyin i’ the chaumer there—wi’ the stang oot o’ her hert at last, and left the sharper i’ mine! But me and yer father—eh, weel we lo’ed her! for to hiz she was like oor ain Isy,—ay, mair a dochter nor a servan—wi’a braw lovin kin’ness in her, no to be luikit for frae ony son, and sic as we never had frae ony afore but oor ain Isy.—Jist gang ye intil the closet there, gien ye wull, and ye’ll see what’ll maybe saften yer hert a bit, and lat ye unerstan’ what mak o’ a thing’s come to the twa auld fowk ye never cared muckle aboot!” James felt bitterly aggrieved by this personal remark of his mother. How unfair she was! What had _he_ ever done to offend her? Had he not always behaved himself properly—except indeed in that matter of which neither she, nor living soul else, knew anything, or would ever know! What right had she then to say such things to him! Had he not fulfilled the expectations with which his father sent him to college? had he not gained a position whose reflected splendour crowned them the parents of James Blatherwick? She showed him none of the consideration or respect he had so justly earned but never demanded! He rose suddenly, and with never a thought save to leave his mother so as to manifest his displeasure with her, stalked heedlessly into the presence of the more heedless dead. The night had indeed fallen, but, the little window of the room looking westward, and a bar of golden light yet lying like a resurrection stone over the spot where the sun was buried, a pale sad gleam, softly vanishing, hovered, hardly rested, upon the lovely, still, unlooking face, that lay white on the scarcely whiter pillow. Coming out of the darker room, the sharp, low light blinded him a little, so that he saw without any certainty of perception; yet he seemed to have something before him not altogether unfamiliar, giving him a suggestion as of something he had known once, perhaps ought now to recognize, but had forgotten: the reality of it seemed to be obscured by the strange autumnal light entering almost horizontally. Concluding himself oddly affected by the sight of a room he had regarded with some awe in his childhood, and had not set foot in it for a long time, he drew a little nearer to the bed, to look closer at the face of this paragon of servants, whose loss was causing his mother a sorrow so unreasonably poignant. The sense of her resemblance to some one grew upon him; but not yet had he begun to recognize the death-changed countenance; he became assured only that he _had_ seen that still face before, and that, would she but open those eyes, he should know at once who she was.