This lack of grace in him had not passed unnoted by her even at the time, but being herself so greatly in fault she had ascribed it to the recoil of a proud man from the dread of social humiliation.  But it took another aspect under the strong light just thrown upon his early life by her discovery in the room below.  Nothing but some act, unforgivable and unforgettable would account for that black mark drawn between a father’s eyes and his son’s face.  No bar sinister could tell a stronger tale.  But this was no bar sinister; rather the deliberate stigmatising of one yet loved, but banned for a reason which was little short of—­Here her conclusions stopped; she would not allow her imagination to carry her any farther.

Unhappy mother, just as she saw something like a prospect of releasing her long-dead husband from the odium of an unjust sentence, to be shaken by this new doubt as to the story and character of the man for whose union with her beloved child she was so anxiously struggling!  Should it not make her pause?  Should she not show wisdom in giving a different meaning from any she had hitherto done, to that stern and inexorable dictum of the father, that no marriage between the two could or should ever be considered?

It was a question for which no ready answer seemed possible in her present mood.  Better to await the time when some move had to be made or some definite decision reached.  Now she must rest,—­rest and not think.

Have any of us ever made the like acknowledgment and then tried to sleep?  In half an hour Mrs. Scoville was again upon her feet, this time with a determination which ignored the hour and welcomed night as though it were broad noon day.

There was a room on this upper floor into which neither she nor Reuther had ever stepped.  She had once looked in but that was all.  To-night—­because she could not sleep; because she must not think--she was resolved to enter it.  Oliver’s room! left as he had left it years before!  What might it not tell of a past concerning which she longed to be reassured?

The father had laid no restrictions upon her, in giving her this floor for her use.  Rights which he ignored she could afford to appropriate.  Dressing sufficiently for warmth, she lit a candle, put out the light in her own room and started down the hall.

If she paused on reaching the threshold of this long-closed room, it was but natural.  The clock on Reuther’s mantel had sent its three clear strokes through the house as her hand fell on the knob, and to her fearing heart and now well-awakened imagination these strokes had sounded in her ear like a “Don’t!  Don’t!” The silence, so gruesome, now that this shrill echo had ceased, was poor preparation for her task.  Yet would she have welcomed any sound—­the least which could have been heard?  No, that were a worse alternative than silence; and, relieved of that momentary obsession consequent upon an undertaking of doubtful outcome, she pushed the door fully open and entered.