“’Tis so I love to hear you speak, Richard, when you uphold the absent.  For I feel it is so you must champion me when I am far away.  My dear old playmate is ever the same, strong to resent, and seeing ever the best in his friends.  Forgive me, Richard, I have been worse than silly.  And will you tell me that story of your adventures which I long to learn?”

Ay, that I would.  I told it her, and she listened silently, save only now and then a cry of wonder or of sympathy that sounded sweet to my ears,—­just as I had dreamed of her listening when I used to pace the deck of the brigantine John, at sea.  And when at length I had finished, she sat looking out over the Green Park, as tho’ she had forgot my presence.

And so Mrs. Manners came in and found us.

It had ever pleased me to imagine that Dorothy’s mother had been in her youth like Dorothy.  She had the same tall figure, grace in its every motion, and the same eyes of deep blue, and the generous but well-formed mouth.  A man may pity, but cannot conceive the heroism that a woman of such a mould must have gone through who has been married since early girlhood to a man like Mr. Manners.  Some women would have been driven quickly to frivolity, and worse, but this one had struggled year after year to maintain an outward serenity to a critical world, and had succeeded, tho’ success had cost her dear.  Each trial had deepened a line of that face, had done its share to subdue the voice which had once rung like Dorothy’s; and in the depths of her eyes lingered a sadness indefinable.

She gazed upon me with that kindness and tenderness I had always received since the days when, younger and more beautiful than now, she was the companion of my mother.  And the unbidden shadow of a thought came to me that these two sweet women had had some sadness in common.  Many a summer’s day I remembered them sewing together in the spring-house, talking in subdued voices which were hushed when I came running in.  And lo! the same memory was on Dorothy’s mother then, half expressed as she laid her hands upon my shoulders.

“Poor Elizabeth!” she said,—­not to me, nor yet to Dorothy; “I wish that she might have lived to see you now.  It is Captain Jack again.”

She sighed, and kissed me.  And I felt at last that I had come home after many wanderings.  We sat down, mother and daughter on the sofa with their fingers locked.  She did not speak of Mr. Manners’s conduct, or of my stay in the sponging-house.  And for this I was thankful.

“I have had a letter from Mr. Lloyd, Richard,” she said.

“And my grandfather?” I faltered, a thickness in my throat.

“My dear boy,” answered Mrs. Manners, gently, “he thinks you dead.  But you have written him?” she added hurriedly.

I nodded.  “From Dumfries.”

“He will have the letter soon,” she said cheerfully.  “I thank Heaven I am able to tell you that his health is remarkable under the circumstances.  But he will not quit the house, and sees no one except your uncle, who is with him constantly.”