The next afternoon found him at Lady Chatterton's. Greta greeted him brightly, but seemed nervous and ill at ease. There were a good many guests, and her time was naturally absorbed in entertaining them. Rufus could hardly get a word with her, and was about to depart rather gloomily when she came up to him. "Mr. Tracy," she said, softly laying her hand on his arm, "I want you to come with me into the other room and be introduced to a great friend of mine—a very great friend of mine she is—and—and I want you to promise to be your true self with her." Greta's light touch thrilled through him; and though he wondered at her words, he followed her obediently into the smaller drawing-room. A grey-haired woman seated by the window turned round at their approach; and Rufus found himself face to face with his mother. Greta stole away; she knew from the softening lines about the young man's face as he looked at the one who had been his boyhood's ideal of all that was good and beautiful, that his pride was now being placed in the background, and a deep content crept into her heart. Later on Mrs. Tracy came forward, leaning on the arm of her son. "Greta, my dear, I am going home. Will you bid adieu to Lady Chatterton for me? I am a little upset, as you can imagine, but Rufus is going with me." Mrs. Tracy's eyes were tearful, and Greta watched mother and son depart with wistful eyes. She did not see Rufus for several days, and then he called, finding her alone in the drawing-room. "I can never thank you enough," he said, with feeling, "for what you have done. I look back now and see that it was my headstrong will, my obstinate pride and bitter words, that were the cause of our estrangement, and that led to my leaving home. I have harbored wrong thoughts, and suppressed all right feeling for years, and I do not deserve to have all this put straight now." "And is your mother going to Derbyshire with you?" "Very shortly." "How happy you will be together." The words escaped her involuntarily. Rufus drew a step nearer her. "Greta, don't you know that I shall never be happy without you there?" Greta was silent; but a pink flush stole over her cheeks. He went on in a nervous, hurried tone— "Do you remember our story long ago; how the little sprite made peace between mother and son? Do you remember the end of the story?" Greta looked out of the window as she answered— "She went back to the buttercups, did she not?" "That was your ending, not mine." "I think it was a very nice ending." "But not the fact." Silence again, broken by such earnest pleading that Rufus gained the day, and with a simple, childlike grace, Greta looked up and placed her hand in his. "And now take me to your mother."