“She did, however.  I was leaving the room when she said, ’Listen a moment, Jane.  The man entered angrily, and leaning on the footboard of the bed cried out, “So you’ve been at your old tricks once more, Susanna!  This is the third time.  You are a bad woman.  I will never live with you again.  I am going away forever, and I’ll take little Willy with me.  If you aren’t fit to be a mother, you aren’t fit to be a wife!” She cried out pitifully, but he lifted the child in his arms and went out with him.’

“At these words, John, I rang the bell and ordered my horse.  Mother paid no attention to that, but continued, ’The woman raved all night, and died early the next morning.’  I said with a good deal of anger, that her husband’s brutality had killed her and that the grave was the only place for a poor woman who was married to such a monster.  And then I heard the trampling of horses’ feet and I came away without another word.  But my heart was hot and I was sick and trembling and I rode so recklessly that it was a wonder I ever reached home.”

“My dear Jane, I think—­”

“Nay, John, I do not want you to express any opinion on the subject.  I should not respect you if you said your mother could do wrong, and I do not wish to hear you say she did right.  I only want you to understand why I refuse to go to Hatton Hall any more.”

“Do not say that, Jane.  I am sure mother was conscious of no feeling but a desire to do good.”

“I do not like her way of doing good.  I will not voluntarily go to receive it.  Would you do so, John?”

“She is my mother.  A few words could not drive us apart.  She may come to you, you may go to her.  As to that, nothing is certain.”

“Except that your words are most uncertain and uncomforting, John.”

Then John rose and went to her side and whispered those little words, those simple words, those apparently meaningless, disconnected words which children and women love and understand so well.  And she wept a little and then smiled, and the wretched story was buried in love and pity—­and perhaps the poor soul knew it!

“You see, Jane, my dear one, the Unknown fulfills what we never dare to expect, so we will leave the door wide open for Faith and Hope.”  And as John said these words, he had a sudden clear remembrance of the empty loom and the fair little woman he had so often seen at work there.  Then a prayer leaped from his heart to the Everlasting Mercy, a prayer we too seldom use, “Father, forgive, they know not what they do.”

For a moment or two they sat hand in hand and were silent.  Then Jane, who was visibly suffering, from headache, went to her room, and John took a pencil and began to make figures and notes in his pocketbook.  His face and manner was quiet and thoughtful.  He had consented to his trial outwardly; inwardly he knew it to be overcome.  And to suffer, to be wronged and unhappy, yet not to cease being loving and pleasant, implies a very powerful, Christ-like disposition.