“Yes, my child.”

And Johanna smoothed her hair in the old, fond way, making no attempt to console her, but only to love her—­always the safest consolation.  And Hilary was thankful that never, even in her sharpest agonies of grief, had she betrayed that secret which would have made her sister’s life miserable, have blotted out the thirty years of motherly love, and caused the other love to rise up like a cloud between her and it, never to be lifted until Johanna sank into the possibly not far-off grave.

“No, no,” she thought to herself, as she looked on that frail, old face, which even the secondary, grief of this last week seemed to have made frailer and older.  “No, it is better as it is; I believe I did right.  The end will show.”

The end was nearer than she thought.  So, sometimes—­not often, lest self-sacrifice should become a less holy thing than it is—­Providence accepts the will for the act, and makes the latter needless.

There was a sudden knock at the hall door.  “It is the young people coming in to supper.”

“It’s not,” said Hilary, starting up—­“it’s not their knock.  It is—­”

She never finished the sentence, for she was sobbing in Robert Lyon’s arms.

“What does it all mean?” cried the bewildered Johanna, of whom, I must confess, for once nobody took the least notice.

It meant that, by one of these strange accidents, as we call them, which in a moment alter the whole current of things, the senior partner had suddenly died, and his son, not being qualified to take his place in the Liverpool house, had to go out to India instead of Robert Lyon, who would now remain permanently, as the third senior partner, in England.

This news had met him at Southampton.  He had gone thence direct to Liverpool, arranged affairs so far as was possible, and returned, traveling without an hour’s intermission, to tell his own tidings, as was best—­or as he thought it was.

Perhaps at the core of his heart lurked the desire to come suddenly back, as, it is said, if the absent or the dead should come, they would find all things changed; the place filled up in home and hearth—­no face of welcome—­no heart leaping to heart in the ecstasy of reunion.

Well, if Robert Lyon had any misgivings—­and being a man, and in love, perhaps he had—­they were ended now.

“Is she glad to see me?” was all he could find to say when, Johanna having considerately vanished, he might have talked as much as he pleased.

Hilary’s only answer was a little, low laugh of inexpressible content.

He lifted up between his bands the sweet face, neither so young nor so pretty as it had been, but oh! so sweet, with the sweetness that long outlives beauty—­a face that a man might look on all his life time and never tire of—­so infinitely loving, so infinitely true!  And he knew it was his wife’s face, to shine upon him day by day, and year by year, till it faded into old age—­beautiful and beloved even then.  All the strong nature of the man gave way; he wept almost like a child in his “little woman’s” arms.