I congratulate you, for I could see you were anxious, and I must find an opportunity of congratulating your young friend himself." Meanwhile no such opportunity was afforded me, though I quite expected and was fully prepared for another visit from Bob in my room.

I waited for him there until dinner-time, but he never came, and I was beginning to wish he would.

It was like the wrapping of the Matterhorn in mist; it only widened the field of apprehension; and yet it was not for me to go to the boy.

My unrest was further aggravated by a letter which I had just received from the boy's mother in answer to my first to her.

It was not a very dreadful letter; but I only trusted that no evil impulse had caused Catherine to write in anything like the same strain to Bob; for neither was it a very charitable letter, nor one that a man could be glad to get from the woman whom he had set out on an enduring pinnacle.
There was only this to be said for it, that years ago I had sought in vain for a really human weakness in Catherine Evers, and now at last I had found one.