Mrs Ogilvy’s wound took a long time to heal, but it did heal in the end. She was very weak, but had for a long time that wonderful exemption from care which is usually the privilege of the dying, though she did not die. Perhaps there was no time of her life when she was happier than during these weeks of illness. Susie was by her bedside night and day. Robbie came in continually, a large shadow standing over her, staying but a moment at first, then longer, sitting by her, talking to her, answering her questions. I do not know that there was soon or fundamentally a great moral improvement in Robbie; but he had been startled into anxiety and kindness, and a little went a long way with those two women, who loved him. For there was little doubt in any mind, except perhaps in his own, that Susie loved him too, with something of the same tolerant, all-explaining, all-pardoning love which was in his mother’s heart. She had done so all her life, waiting for him all those years, through which he never thought of her: that did not matter to Susie,--nobody had ever touched her faithful simple heart but he. She would not perhaps have been an unhappy woman had he never come back: she would have gone on looking for him with a vague and visionary hope, which would have lent a grace to her gentle being, maiden-mother as she had been born. And even this wild episode, which she never quite understood, which she never desired to understand, made no difference to Susie. She forgave it all to the man who was dead, and shed tears over the horror of his fate; but she put easily all the blame upon him. Robbie had been faithful to the death for him, would have gone away instead of him to save him. It covered Lew with a shining mantle of charity that he called forth so much that was noble in his friend.