The hitherto proud, tearless woman of the world wept a flood when unconsciously, innocently, Catherine spoke of the lost Herbert.  On one such occasion she threw herself on the girl’s neck, exclaiming, ‘Oh, what have I done! what have I done!’

Mrs Hardman never spent a day apart from Catherine.  What a change of feeling one short year had wrought!  Formerly, she looked on the girl as a bar to her ambitious projects; now, she could not lavish love and kindness enough to satisfy her sentiment of atonement towards the same being.  One evening they were walking in that part of the park which overlooks the sea, when a sail appeared in the horizon, then another, and another.  The sight of ships never failed to remind the mother of her son; for the presentiment regarding his disappearance never forsook her.  ‘Dearest Catherine,’ she exclaimed, ’would that one of those sails were wafting him back to us.’  The girl trembled, and Mrs Hardman begged forgiveness for an involuntary allusion which deeply affected her companion.  ’But I must be forgiven for telling you that I cannot, will not, abandon every hope of seeing him again.  If you knew the pictures of happiness I sometimes draw, in which you and he are the chief actors, I am sure they would please instead of paining you.  I sometimes fancy him returned; I go through in imagination your marriage; I feel a real delight in fancying myself placing your hand in his at the altar; I’—–­ Here the speaker was interrupted.  Her companion, clasping her suddenly for support, had, overcome with emotion, fainted in her arms!

From that day Mrs Hardman forbore all allusion to her lost son.

That summer went by, and grief had made such inroads on Mrs Hardman’s mind, that her health gradually declined.  Catherine also was weaker than she had ever been for a continuance previous to her last illness.  Besides the disfigurement the disease had made in her countenance, grief had paled her complexion and hollowed her cheek.  Yet she kept up her spirits, and was a source of unfailing consolation to Mrs Hardman, who gradually weaned her from her father’s house to live entirely at Coote-down, where Dodbury also spent every hour he could spare from business.  He had recovered all his lost influence in the family affairs, and was able, by his good management, to avert from the estate the embarrassments with which his fair client’s former extravagances had threatened it.  Mrs Hardman was now gradually becoming a rich woman.

Ere the winter arrived, she expressed a wish to pay a visit to her late father’s attorney, who lived at Barnstable.  Dodbury offered to accompany her; but she declined this civility.  She wished to go alone.  There was something mysterious in this journey.  ’What could its object be?’ asked the lawyer of his daughter.’  Surely, if Mrs Hardman require any legal business to be transacted, I am the proper person to accomplish it.’  Catherine was equally ignorant, and the mistress of Coote-down was evidently not inclined to enlighten her.