"You have come!" she cried. "I was looking for you;" raising herself on her couch as much as was possible to her, as if she would have thrown herself into his arms. When she felt the pressure of his hands, tears sprang to her eyes. "I knew," she cried, "that you would come. I have been looking for you, and praying for you, Lord Erradeen." "Perhaps," said Walter, moved too, he could scarcely tell why, "that is how I have come." "Oh, but I am glad, glad to see you," the poor lady said. "You never came back last year; but I will not reproach you--I am too glad to have you here. And where have you been, and what have you been doing? To see you is like a child coming home." "I have been in many different places, and uneasy in all," said Walter; "and as for what I have been doing, it has not been much good: wandering about the face of the earth, seeking I don't know what; not knowing, I think, even what I want." She held out her hand to him again: her eyes were full of pity and tenderness. "Oh how I wanted you to come back that I might have spoken freely to you. I will tell you what you want, Lord Erradeen." "Stop a little," he said, "I don't wish to plunge into that. Let us wait a little. I think I am pleased to come back, though I hate it. I am pleased always more or less to do what I did not do yesterday." "That is because your mind is out of order, which is very natural," she said. "How should it be in order with so much to think of? You will have been travelling night and day?" "Rather quickly; but that matters nothing; it is easy enough travelling. I am not so effeminate as to mind being tired; though as a matter of fact I am not tired," he said. "So far as that goes, I could go on night and day." She looked at him with that mingling of pleasure and pain with which a mother listens to the confidences of her child. "Have you been home to see your mother?" she asked. Walter shook his head. "I have had no thought but how to get to Scotland the quickest way. I have felt as if something were dragging me. What is it? All this year I have been struggling with something. I have sometimes thought if I had come back here you could have helped me." "I would--I would! if I could," she cried. "It is not a thing that can be endured," said Walter; "it must come to an end. I don't know how or by what means; but one thing is certain, I will not go on bearing it. I will rather make an end of myself." She put a hand quickly upon his arm. "Oh do not say that; there is much, much that must be done before you can despair: and _that_ is the thought of despair. Some have done it, but you must not. No--not you--not you." "What must I do then?" She caressed his arm with her thin, little, half-transparent hand, and looked at him wistfully with her small face, half child, half old woman, suffused and tremulous. "Oh!" she said, "my bonnie lad! you must be good--you must be good first of all."