“We live for and by each other,” Leonard returned. “We think that we stand by ourselves, and we are lifted up by the work of our forefathers; we talk as if we lived alone, and we are but links in the chain; we are formed and we form; we are forged and we forge. I have been like unto one who stands in a crowd and is moved here and there, but believes all the time that he is alone on a hill-top.” He was silent for awhile. Presently he went on. “All that has followed the crime,” he said, “has been in the nature of consequence. The man who committed the act retired from the world; he deserted the world; he gave up his duties; he resigned his children to others. One of them went to sea; he was drowned; others were drowned with him--that was but a consequence. His daughter, neglected and ill educated, ran away with a vulgar adventurer whom she took for a gallant gentleman--that was a consequence. His son found out the dreadful truth and committed suicide; his boys had no father; two of them fell into evil ways--that was a consequence. My own father died young, but not so young as to leave me a mere infant--that was a misfortune, but not a consequence. In other words, Constance, the sins of that old man have been visited upon the children, but the soul of the son has been as the soul of the father. That is the sum and substance of the whole. The consequences are still with us. That poor lady in the Commercial Road is still in the purgatory of poverty which she brought upon herself. Her son is, and will continue, what he is. Her daughter rises above her surroundings. ‘She shall surely live, saith the Lord God.’ My two uncles will go on to the end in their own way, and so, I suppose, shall I myself.” He stopped; the light went out of his eyes. He was once more outwardly his former self. “That is all, Leonard?” “That is all. I want you to understand that at the end--if this is the end--I desire to feel towards that old man no thought or feeling of reproach, only of pity for the fatal act of a moment and the long punishment of seventy years--and you, whose ancestor he smote----” “Only with forgiveness in the name of that ancestor and of pity akin to yours and equal to yours. Come, Leonard: perhaps the end has come already.” They entered the Park by the broken gate and the ruined Lodge. “I have been looking for some such call,” said Constance. “This morning I sent you that message. I knew it was a true message, because there fell upon me, quite suddenly, a deep calm. All my anxieties vanished. We have been so torn”--she spoke as if the House was hers as well--“by troubles and forebodings, with such woes and rumours of woes, that when they vanished suddenly and unexpectedly I knew that the time was over.” “You are a witch, Constance.”