with the fire-new thought of the scientific and humanitarian age.  Walter Egremont was then a frequent visitor of the house; he and Horace talked many a summer night into dawn over the problems which nowadays succeed measles and scarlatina as a form of youthful complaint.  But Horace Ormonde had even a shorter span of life before him than his invalid father.  He was drowned in bathing, and it was Egremont who had to take the news up to The Chestnuts.  A few months later, there was another funeral from the house.  Mrs. Ormonde remained alone.

It was in this room that Egremont had waited for the mother’s coming, that morning when he returned companionless from the beach.  He was then but two-and-twenty; big task was as terrible as a man can be called upon to perform.  Mrs. Ormonde had the strength to remember that; she shed no tears, uttered no lamentations.  When, after a few questions, she was going silently from the room, Walter, his own eyes blinded, caught her hand and pressed it passionately in both his own.  She was the woman whom he reverenced above all others, worshipping her with that pure devotion which young men such as he are wont to feel for some gracious lady much their elder.  At that moment he would have given his own life to the sea could he by so doing have brought her back the son who would never return.  Such moments do not come often to the best of us, perhaps in very truth do not repeat themselves.  Egremont never entered the library without having that impulse of uttermost unselfishness brought back vividly to his thoughts; on that account he liked the room, and gladly spent a quiet half-hour in it.

In a little less than that Mrs. Ormonde returned from her breathing of the sea air.  At the door she was told of Egremont’s arrival, and with a look of pleased expectancy she went at once to the library.

Egremont rose from the fireside, and advanced with the quiet confidence with which one greets only the dearest friends.

‘So the sunshine has brought you,’ she said, holding his hand for a moment.  ’We had a terrible storm in the night, and the morning is very sweet after it.  Had you arrived a very little sooner, you would have been in time to drive with me.’

She was one of those women who have no need to soften their voice when they would express kindness.  Her clear and firm, yet sweet, tones uttered with perfection a nature very richly and tenderly endowed.  During the past five years she had aged in appearance; the grief which she would not expose had drawn its lines upon her features, and something too of imperfect health was visible there.  But her gaze was the same as ever, large, benevolent, intellectual.  In her presence Egremont always felt a well-being, a peace of mind, which gave to his own look its pleasantest quality.  Of friends she was still, and would ever be, the dearest to him.  The thought of her approval was always active with him when he made plans for fruitful work; he could not have come before her with a consciousness of ignoble fault weighing upon his mind.