"There is no one nearer or dearer to me than you, Allan--no one--not even my own son. You have been to me as a son--the son of the man I fondly loved, whose face I was to look upon only once--once after those long years in which we were parted. I have loved you as a part of my youth, the living memory of my lost love. Ah, my dear, I had to learn the lesson of self-surrender when I was younger than you. I loved him with all my heart and mind, and I gave him up." "You did wrong to give him up. He himself said so. But there is no parallel between the two cases. This girl has let me believe in her. I have lived for a year in this sweet delusion--a bliss no more real than the happiness of a dream. She would have loved me; she would have married me; all would have been well for us but for your son. When he came, my chance was blighted. He has charms of mind and manner which I have not--like me, they say, but ten times handsomer. He can speak to her with a language that I have not. Oh, those singing notes on the violin; that long-drawn lingering sweep of the bow, like the cry of a spirit in paradise--an angelic voice telling of love ethereal--love released from clay; those tears which seemed to tremble on the strings; that loud, sudden sob of passionate pain, which came like a short, sharp amen to the prayer of love! I could understand that language better than he thought. He stole her love from me--set himself deliberately to rob me of my life's happiness." "It is cruel to say that, Allan. He is incapable of treachery, of deliberate wrong-doing. He is a creature of impulse." "Meaning a creature with whom self is the only god. And in one of his impulses he told Suzette of his love, even in plainer words than his Stradivarius could tell the story; and from that hour her heart was false to me. I saw the change in her when I came back--after my father's death." "You are unjust to him, Allan, in your grief and anger. Whatever his feelings may have been, he has fought against them. He has made himself almost an exile from this house." "He has been biding his time, no doubt; and now that I have had the _coup de grace_ he will come back." CHAPTER XII. "THAT WAY MADNESS LIES."