Chapter 6 - Page 2

lifted her face and looked at him, and it was easy to see that
Love and the man had met. Never before in all his life had she seen him
so beautiful--his broad, white forehead, his bright contemplative eyes,
his sweet, loving, thoughtful face breaking into kind smiles, his gentle
manner, and his scrupulously refined dress made a picture of manhood
that appealed to her first, as a mother, and secondly, as a woman. And
in her heart an instantaneous change took place. She put her hands on
his shoulders and lifted her face for his kiss.

"My good son!" she said. "Thy love is my love, and thy joy is my joy!
Sit thee down, John, and tell me all about it."

So they sat down together on the bright hearth, sat down so close that
John could feel the constant touch of his mother's hand--that white,
firm hand which had guided and comforted him all his life long.

"Mother," he said, "if anyone had told me this morning that I should be
Jane's betrothed husband before I slept this night, I would hardly have
believed in the possibility. But Love is like a flower; it lies quiet in
its long still growth, and then in some happy hour it bursts into
perfect bloom. I had finished my business at Overton and stayed to eat
the market dinner with the spinners. Then in the quiet afternoon I took
my way home, and about a mile above the village I met Jane. I alighted
and took the bridle off Bendigo's neck over my arm, and asked permission
to walk with her. She said she was going to Harlow House, and would be
glad of my company. As we walked she told me they intended to return
there; she said she felt its large rooms with their faded magnificence
to be far more respectable than the little modern villa with its
creaking floors and rattling windows in which they were living."

"She is quite right," said Mrs. Hatton. "I wonder at them for leaving
the old place. Many a time and oft I have said that."

"She told me they had been up there a good deal during the past summer
and had enjoyed the peace and solitude of the situation; and the large
silent rooms were full of stories, she said--love stories of the old gay
Regency days. I said something about filling them with love stories of
the present day, and she laughed and said her mother was going there to
farm the land and make some money out of it; and she added with a smile
like sunshine, 'And I am going to try and help her. That accounts for
our walk this afternoon, Mr. Hatton,' and I told her I was that well
pleased with the walk, I cared little for what had caused it.

"In a short time we came in sight of the big, lonely house and entered
the long neglected park and garden. I noticed at once a splendid belt