"His life has been placid, studious, kindly, and useful. It may be that he was best fitted for that calm, secluded life--it may be that if you had taken the more natural and the more selfish course--and in so doing parted him for ever from his mother, who was a proud woman, capable of lifelong resentment--it may be that remorse might have blighted his life, and that even your love would not have consoled him under the conviction that he had broken his mother's heart. I know that, after her strong-minded masterful fashion, she adored him. He was all she had in this world to love or care for; and it is quite possible that a lasting quarrel with him might have killed her. Dear Mrs. Wornock, pray do not think that your sacrifice was altogether in vain. No such self-surrender as that can be without some good fruit. I do not pretend to be a holy person, but I do believe in the power of goodness. And, consider, dear friend, your life has not been all unhappy. You had a kind and good husband." "Good! He was more than good, and for over a year of our married life I was a burden to him. He was an exile from the home he loved, for my sake--for me, who ought to have brightened his home for him." "But that was only a dark interval," said Allan, remembering what Mrs. Mornington had told him, of the long residence at Grindelwald, and the birth of the heir in that remote spot. "There were happier days afterwards." "Yes, we had a few peaceful years here, before death took him from me, and while our boy was growing in strength and beauty." "And in these long years of widowhood music has been your comforter. In your devotion to art you have lived the higher life." "Yes," she answered, with an inspired look, striking a triumphant chord, "music has been my comforter--music has conjured back my dead father, my lost lover. Music has been my life and my hope." CHAPTER XI. THE MASTER OF DISCOMBE. Mrs. Wornock's frank revelation of her girlish love and self-sacrifice lifted a burden from Allan's heart and mind. He had been interested in her, and attracted towards her from that first summer noontide when he studied her thoughtful face in the village church, and when he lingered among the villagers' graves to hear her play. His sympathy had grown with every hour he spent in her society, and he had been deeply grateful for the friendship which had so cordially included him and the girl he loved. It had been very painful to him to believe that this sweet-mannered woman belonged to the fallen ones of the earth, that her graces were the graces of a Magdalen, most painful to think that she was no fitting companion for the girl who had so readily responded to her friendly advances.