her eyes closed, which seemed to make the rest of her face, which was all quivering with emotion, even more expressive than before. ‘I thought that I had not told you enough--that you deserved explanations, which, painful, most painful as they are, ought to be given to you now. I suppose I told you very little to-day?’ ‘Nothing, or next to nothing,’ he replied. ‘I suppose--I wanted to spare myself,’ she said, with a faint quiver of a smile. ‘Mother,’ cried John, ‘I will take it for granted. Why should you make yourself wretched on my account? And, after all, when the fact is once allowed, what does it matter? I know all that I need to know--now.’ ‘Perhaps you are right, John. You know what I would have died to keep from your knowledge, if it were not folly and nonsense to use such words. Much, much would be spared in this world if one could purchase the extinction of it by dying. I know that very well: it is a mere phrase.’ He made no reply, but watched with increasing interest the changes in her face. ‘It was thought better you should not know. What good could it have done you? A father dead is safe; he seems something sacred, whatever he may have been in reality. _I_ thought, I don’t shrink from the responsibility, that it was better for you; and my father agreed with me, John.’ ‘Grandmother did not,’ he said, quickly; ‘now I know what she meant.’ ‘Then,’ she said, ‘now that you know, you can judge between us.’ She made no appeal to his affection. She was not of that kind. And John was sufficiently like her to pause, not to utter the words that came to his lips. He seemed once more to see himself in his boyhood, so full of ambition and pride and confidence. After awhile he said, ‘It is much for me to say, but I think I approve. If it is hard upon me as a man, what would it have been when I was a boy?’ ‘I am glad,’ she said, ‘that you see it in that light;’ and then she paused, as if concluding that part of the subject. She resumed again, after a moment: ‘I took every precaution. We disappeared from the place, and changed our name. My father and mother changed their home, broke the thread--I left no clue that I could think of.’ She stopped again and cleared her throat, and said, with difficulty, ‘Does he think he has any clue?’ John could not make any reply. How his heart veered from side to side!--sometimes all with her in her pride and passion, sometimes touched with a sudden softening recollection of the man with his sophistries, his self-reconciliating philosophy, his good humour, and his almost childish, ingratiating smile. ‘I don’t see how he can have found out anything. I have never lost sight of him--that was easy enough. He has had whatever indulgences, or alleviations of his lot were permitted. I left money in the chaplain’s hand for him when the time came for his coming out. I did not trust the chaplain even with any clue.’