“We are failing,” he said abruptly. “Mr. Torridon, if you are a rat you had better run.” “I shall not run, sir,” said Ralph. “God’s Body!” said his master, “we shall all run together, I think;--but not yet.” Then he took up the papers again, and began to read. It was a few days later that Ralph received the news of his mother’s illness. She had written to him occasionally, telling him of his father’s tiresome ways, his brother’s arrogance, his sister’s feeble piety, and finally she had told him of Beatrice’s arrival. “I consented very gladly,” she had written, “for I thought to teach my lady a lesson or two; but I find her very pert and obstinate. I do not understand, my dear son, how you could have wished to make her your wife; and yet I will grant that she has a taking way with her; she seems to fear nothing but her own superstitions and folly, but I am very happy to think that all is over between you. She never loved you, my Ralph; for she cares nothing when I speak your name, as I have done two or three times; nor yet Master More either. I think she has no heart.” Ralph had wondered a little as he read this, at his mother’s curious interest in the girl; and he wondered too at the report of Beatrice’s callousness. It was her damned pride, he assured himself. Then, one evening as he arrived home from Hackney where he had slept the previous night, he found a messenger waiting for him. The letter had not been sent on to him, as he had not left word where he was going. It contained a single line from his father. “Your mother is ill. Come at once. She wishes for you.” * * * * * It was in the stormy blackness of a February midnight that he rode up through the lighted gatehouse to his home. Above the terrace as he came up the road the tall hall-window glimmered faintly like a gigantic luminous door hung in space; and the lower window of his father’s room shone and faded as the fire leapt within. A figure rose up suddenly from before the hall-fire as he came in, bringing with him a fierce gust of wet wind through the opened door; and when he had slipped off his dripping cloak into his servant’s hands, he saw that his father was there two yards away, very stern and white, with outstretched hands. “My son,” said the old man, “you are too late. She died two hours ago.” It was a fierce shock, and for a moment he stood dazed, blinking at the light, holding his father’s warm slender hands in his own, and trying to assimilate the news. He had been driven inwards, and his obstinacy weakened, during that long ride from town through the stormy sunset into the black, howling night; memories had reasserted themselves on the strength of his anxiety; and the past year or two slipped from him, and left him again the eldest son of the house and of his two parents.