“It is only my mother,” explained Rob.  “She’ll be glad to see you.”

The next moment she had perceived the boys, and with quick impulse, set the plate upon the ground and came forward, and before a word of introduction could be spoken, had taken the visitor’s hand between both her own fair palms, holding it thus, with gentle, gracious pressure, in a pretty, cordial way she had, while she greeted him.

The soft eyes that rested on his face filled with kindness and welcome.

“So this is my Rob’s friend,” she was saying, in a low, musical voice.  “Rob’s mother is delighted to see you for his sake and for your own too, Edgar, for I greatly admired your gifted mother.  I saw her once only, when I was a young girl, but I can never forget her lovely face and sweet, plaintive voice.  It was one of the last times she ever acted, and she was ill and pale, but she was exquisitely beautiful and made the most charming Juliet.  She interested me more than any actress I have ever seen.”

Edgar Poe longed to fall down and kiss her feet—­to worship her.  Her beauty, her gentleness and her gracious words so stirred his soul that he grew faint.  Power of speech almost left him, and, vastly to his humiliation, he could with difficulty control his voice to utter a few stumbling words of thanks—­he who was usually so ready of speech!

If she noticed his confusion she did not appear to do so.  Her heart had been touched by all she had heard from her son of the lonely boy, and she had also been interested in accounts of his gifts that had come to her from various sources.  The beauty, the poetry, the pensiveness of his face moved her deeply—­knowing his history and divining the lack of sympathy one of his bent would probably find in the Allan home, for all its indulgences.

She sat on a garden-bench and talked to him for a time, in her gentle, understanding way, and then, not wishing to be a restraint upon the boys, (after placing her husband’s fine library at Edgar’s disposal, and urging him to come often to see Rob) withdrew into the house.

The motherless boy looked after her until she had disappeared, and stared at the door that had closed upon her until he was recalled from his reverie by the voice of his friend, suggesting that they now see the rabbits.  Edgar looked at the gentle creatures with unseeing eyes, though he appeared to be listening to the prattle of his companion concerning them.  Suddenly, in a voice filled with enthusiasm and with a touch of awe in it, he said: 

“Rob, your mother is divinely beautiful—­and good.”

“Bully,” was the nonchalant reply.  “The best thing about her is the way she takes up for a fellow when he brings in a bad report or gets into a scrape.  Fathers always think it’s their sons’ fault, you know.”

Edgar flushed. “Bully—­” he said to himself, with a shudder.  The adjective applied to her seemed blasphemy.