I sat where I was, weeping bitter tears--bitter as Janet's--and thought
of the little lassie in the dirty pink frock that had sung and swung
about the stairs, and of the boy who had stood day-dreaming, looking up
into the blue sky. Sometimes I was wildly angry. Whose fault was it? Who
was answerable for this? If it was the young people's own fault, someone
ought to have looked after them better, ought to have prevented it. No
one, not even I, could help them now, that was the bitterest, bitterest
part of it; no one and nothing--save time, or death.

I wished that day I had never left my children.


II.

I must pass over a long period now--I suppose I should have said I was
writing of a great many years ago, and come to the time, twenty years
later, when Paul came home from abroad. He had not been home all these
years, and neither had I been once in the south.

Janet, my poor Janet, was long since dead. She had died before she was
quite two years married. It was an additional pang to my grief that I
had never said good-bye to her at all; but no good-bye was better than
that awful one I had witnessed of Paul.

What was the precise explanation of it I never knew. It was easy to
divine that Janet had indeed been engaged to marry Paul, and had given
him up; but whether this was the result of some quarrel, or whether she
had deliberately done it, dazzled by the prospect of a union with an
earl's son, I cannot say. Anyhow, I am sure she quickly regretted her
determination. I am certain she loved only Paul. But the word had been