‘She lives!  She is saved.’

My mother led me into the other studio, and I stood before the great picture.  Wilderspin and Sleaford, feeling that something had occurred of a private and delicate nature, lingered out of hearing in the smaller studio.

‘I must be taken to her at once,’ I muttered to my mother; ‘at once.’

So living was the portrait of Winifred that I felt that she must be close at hand.  I looked round to see if she herself were not standing by me dressed in the dazzling draperies gleaming from Wilderspin’s superb canvas.

But in place of Winifred the profile of my mother’s face, cold, proud, and white, met my gaze.  Again did the stress of overmastering emotion make of me a child, as it had done on the night of the landslip.  ‘Mother!’ I said, ‘you see who it is?’

She made no answer:  she stood looking steadfastly at the picture; but the tremor of the nostrils, the long deep breaths she drew, told me of the fierce struggle waging within her breast between conscience and pity, with rage and cruel pride.  My old awe of her returned.  I was a little boy again, trembling for Winnie.  In some unaccountable and, I believe, unprecedented way I had always felt that she, my own mother, belonged to some haughty race superior to mine and Winnie’s; and nothing but the intensity of my love for Winnie could ever have caused me to rebel against my mother.

‘Dear mother,’ I murmured, ’all the mischief and sorrow and pain are ended now; and we shall all be happy; for you have a kind heart, dear, and cannot help loving poor Winnie, when you come to know her.’

She made no answer save that her lips slowly reddened again after the pallor; then came a quiver in them, as though pity were conquering pride within her breast, and then that contemptuous curl that had often in the past cowed the heart of the fearless and pugnacious boy whom no peril of sea or land could appal.

‘She is found,’ I said.  ’And, mother, there is no longer an estrangement between you and me.  I forgive you everything now.’

I leapt from her as though I had been stung, so sudden and unexpected was the look of scorn that came over her face as she said, ’You forgive me!’ It recalled my struggle with her on that dreadful night:  and in a moment I became myself again.  The pleading boy became, at a flash, the stern and angry man that misery had made him.  With my heart hedged once more with points of steel to all the world but Winnie, I turned away.  I did not know then that her attitude towards me at this moment came from the final struggle in her breast between her pride and that remorse which afterwards took possession of her and seemed as though it would make the remainder of her life a tragedy without a smile in it.  At that moment Wilderspin and Sleaford came in from the smaller studio.  ‘Where is she?’ I said to Wilderspin.  ’Take me to her at once—­take me to her who sat for this picture.  It is she whom I and Sinfi Lovell were seeking in Wales.’