He bent to kiss her at once: just in the same cold, quiet manner in which he had spoken; as if his mind were withdrawn from the present. She felt it bitterly; she blamed her "quick feelings" aloud; and when her tears were dried, she ran up to the nursery in a sudden impulse, seized Benja, and sat down with him upon Honour's rocking-chair. There she fondled him to her; she pushed his hair from his brow; she laid his hot cheek, clear again under the influence of the warm water, against her own. "Benja love mamma still?" she murmured softly in his ear. "Mamma did not mean to hurt him." And the noble little fellow broke into a loving smile in her face, by way of answer, and kissed her many times with his rosy lips. "Be very gentle with his poor cheek, Honour," she said, as she put him down and left the room. "It is only a little bruised, I see." "Then it _was_ an accident, as master said," decided the wondering Honour. "I declare if I did not think at the time she had done it herself!" Mr. Carleton St. John had not stirred from his place at the window. He stood there still, looking out, but seeing nothing. The entrance of his wife into the room did not arouse him. "I have been to make my peace with him, George," she said, almost as inaudibly as she had spoken above. "Dear little Benja!--We are better friends than ever, and he has been giving me a hundred kisses of forgiveness. Oh, George, my husband, I am so sorry! Indeed, indeed, I will strive to subdue my fits of passion. I will not strike him again." But George Carleton St. John stood as one who understands not. He did not hear: his thoughts were in the past. The injunction--nay, the prayer--of his dying wife was present to him; the very look on her sweet face as she spoke it; the faint tones of her loving voice, soon to be silent for ever. "When the months and the years go by, and you think of another wife, oh, choose one that will be a _mother_ to my child. Be not allured by beauty, be not tempted by wealth, be not ensnared by specious deceit; but take one who will be to him the loving mother that I would have been." Bitterly, bitterly, the prayer came back to him. How had he fulfilled it? He glanced round at the wife he had chosen, and could have groaned aloud in the anguish of his remorseful heart. CHAPTER VI. THE ALNWICK SUPERSTITION. The time went on at Alnwick Hall just as it goes on everywhere, and the two boys grew with it. It was autumn weather. Benja was a sturdy gentleman of nearly four, strong and independent; George, a delicate little fellow of nearly two, with fair curls and a bright rose-tint in his cheeks.