"It is not _well_, St. Leon. You are unnerved, troubled, thoughtful even beyond your wont. Will you forgive me for asking why?" The dark, inscrutable eyes looked at her gravely. "I might turn your deeds upon yourself," he said. "Why did you faint in the garden at Belle Vue to-day?" She flushed, and then grew very pale again. "I will tell you the truth," she said, "or a part of it at least. I was unnerved and startled by the terrible resemblance of the beautiful Mrs. Lynn to--" "My lost wife," he said, slowly, filling up her painful pause. "So you noticed it?" she said. "Could one help it?" he asked in his slow, repressed voice. "Why do you call it a terrible resemblance, mother?" "She is so like, so like--she is the living image of what Laurel must have been now if she lived! And the child, St. Leon, the child--" she broke down suddenly, and burst into wild, hysterical sobbing. Shocked by the passionate grief so unusual in his stately lady-mother, he drew his arm tenderly around her and led her to a seat, kneeling down humbly before her. "Mother, does the old wound still ache so bitterly?" he said, in blended pity and remorse. "I had thought the pain of it was past. Ah, I can never forgive myself for the madness, the cruelty, that robbed you of the daughter you loved!" "And the grandchild I expected," she sobbed bitterly. "Ah, St. Leon, I can never forget how my hopes were blasted! Forgive me for those weak tears, my son. All the old regret and sorrow were stirred anew in my heart to-day by the sight of Mrs. Lynn and her beautiful child." He had no answer for her. He was too proud and reserved to tell his mother the truth--that he, too, had been shaken by a ghost from the past that day. He knelt by her silently, letting her sob out all her grief and sorrow against his shoulder, and when she had grown calmer he said, gently: "Mother, dear, you must not see this Mrs. Lynn again. It agitates you too much. After all, it is only a resemblance. She might not feel flattered if she knew that we compared her with my simple, little girl-wife, dead so long ago. Let me take you away to the seashore or the mountains while Mrs. Lynn remains at Belle Vue." But she negatived the proposition in extreme alarm. "It could only afford me pleasure to see Mrs. Lynn again," she declared. "I love her for her likeness to the dead. I am unwilling to lose a single chance of seeing her. And I promise you, St. Leon, that I will not lose my self-control again as I did to-day in the first shock of meeting her. I will be as calm and cold as she is." CHAPTER LI. A few days later Mr. Ford brought his niece and her son to call at Eden.