seemed almost of fear, which my mother used to give me sometimes
when I entered a room where she sat at her embroidery-work. My
mother dearly loved fine embroideries and laces, and in thinking of
her I can no more separate her from them than I can a flower from
its scalloped setting of petals.

I used to slink away as soon as possible when my mother turned her
startled blue eyes upon me in such wise, that she might regain her
peace, and sometimes I used to send my brother John to her on some
errand, if I could manage it, knowing that he could soon drive me
from her mind. One learns early such little tricks with women; they
are such tender things, and it stirs one's heart to impatience to
see them troubled. However, I will not deny that I may have been at
times disturbed with some bitterness and jealousy at the sight of my
brother and my stepfather having that which I naturally craved, for
the heart of a little lad is a hungry thing for love, and has pangs
of nature which will not be stilled, though they are to be borne
like all else of pain on earth. But after I saw Mary Cavendish
all that passed, for I got, through loving so entirely, such
knowledge of love in others that I saw that the excuse of love,
for its weaknesses and its own crimes even, is such as to pass
understanding. Looking at my mother caressing my brother instead of
myself, I entered so fully into her own spirit of tenderness that I
no longer rebelled nor wondered. The knowledge of the weakness of
one's own heart goes far to set one at rights with all others.

When I first saw Mary Cavendish she was, as I said before, a little
baby maid of two and I a loutish lad of fourteen, and I was going
through the park of Cavendish Hall, which lay next ours, one morning
in May, when all the hedges were white and pink, and the blue was