She was seated on a low stool beside Miss Charlotte Carlaw's chair; her head was resting against the old woman's knee. Miss Carlaw, leaning in her old attitude on her stick, had been silent for some time. The two women had returned only the day before, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, from the Continent. "Well, there were several reasons, my child," she said. "I've been growing older within these past few months--older not only in years but in my outlook on life, I think. You'll laugh, perhaps, when I say it, but I've gone through many, many years of my life in a sort of wild hurry, striving to get out of it--out of every hour of it--the most that could be squeezed. If I had my time to come again, I think--no, I am quite sure--that I should linger a little by the roadside, as it were; perhaps in that way I should see more of it, and should understand more clearly the meaning of it all. The nearer we come to the finish of it, child, the more clearly do we understand that it is not for us to judge; not for us, in our petty fashion, to say what is right or what is wrong. Only at the end, when we go to Him who sent us here, carrying in our hands the poor little fruits of what we have done, can we know how sadly we have blundered, how much there is that we might have done better. Look at me, 'Linda; I started without eyes, but even that should not have blinded me to all the better things I passed by. And so, before it is too late, I want to do one little thing that I have left undone; I want in all humility to make some reparation to you." "Reparation? To me?" "Yes, to you. There was a time--a long while ago--when I thought hardly of you, because I thought you had deceived some one I loved. Well, perhaps you judged him better than I did; perhaps, after all, I was the poor fool who was deceived, and you--out of that love which teaches a woman more than anything else can do--found the better man, after all. You remember I came to you, pitying your loneliness, when he died, and I have been more than recompensed by your love and devotion to me since." "You have been very, very good to me," said 'Linda in a low voice. "But for you I might have been left destitute." "There, there, we won't talk of that," said the old woman. "You know, since we have been abroad our good old friend the captain has written to us more than once. He mentioned in one of his letters to me about the statue which had been erected to your husband. I don't want to trouble you with sad memories, but it has occurred to me that you might like to go again to the place where he was born and to the place where they love and remember him so well. Help me to be unselfish, child, for I fear that I have selfishly tried to thrust out of your memory any thought of him. I know you loved him, and he was, perhaps, a better man than I judged him to be. Will you forgive me if I have misjudged him?" "Indeed, I have nothing to forgive," replied 'Linda.