“Just then a door opened and the master of the house appeared: a young, florid man, easy and good-natured, with a certain air of distinction about him. I introduced myself and repeated my story. “‘Well, come in out of the rain now, at any rate,’ said he. ‘I am just sitting down to dinner. You will not refuse to join me?’ “I accepted the invitation and found my host bright, well-read, well-travelled: a most agreeable companion. “As we were smoking after the meal, he said, hesitatingly:— “‘Do you know I have been wanting to make your acquaintance for a long time past? I have had an instinctive feeling that I could confide in you as in no one else: a strange sympathy going out to you while you were personally unknown to me. And now I feel it stronger than ever. I cannot shake it off. May I make a father confessor of you? I am sick of this life. I want to be at something real.’ “I encouraged him to speak, and promised him all the help my experience should enable me to give him. “‘Well, I will leave you for a little to collect my thoughts,’ said he. ‘Be so kind as to remain here.’ “While he was away I looked about the room, and found myself attracted by a picture, evidently a portrait, of a lady. I considered it attentively, and to my utter surprise recognised my mysterious visitor and guide. “‘Who is that?’ I asked my host on his return. “‘That? My mother. She died when I was a child. Yet’—with a hesitancy that was almost shamefacedness—‘yet, I feel somehow as though she were still caring for me.’ “We had a long talk in which he recounted his life, that of a young man about town; and the upshot of it was that he promised to come to the communion service on the following morning. “I was at the church very early, waiting anxiously for his appearance. “‘Do you really suppose he will come?’ said the friend who was to help me celebrate, and to whom I had related the strange experience. ‘You had better give up any hope of seeing him. It was probably nothing but a fit of the sentimentality that follows a comfortable dinner. It took that form because you happened to be with him. I have seen dozens of such cases.’ “Still I had faith in my convert; and as the service went on and he did not appear, I felt my heart grow big with sorrowful disappointment. “I walked home sadly enough. “In the hall I found the butler of the previous evening. He looked white and scared. He was trembling. “‘Sir, sir,’ he stammered, ‘come with me. Come quickly. My master is dead. I found him dead this morning.’” * * * * * A silence fell upon us. The cypresses waved mysteriously towards the heavens—my friend’s face, with the awe-struck eyes, showing white amid the gloom. “A mother’s love,” he murmured. “Why should it not compel the forces of material being? A mother’s love. Is it not ‘the last relay and ultimate outpost of Eternity?’” THE PHANTOM BRIDE