He had attended my poor mother in her mental illness, and now found the same fancy about the lady and the rose, and the same dread of evil spirits in me the son.
* * * * * Three weeks later I was quite well again, though pale and exhausted by the long nervous paroxysms.

The whole millstone weight of sin was, as it were, gone from my bosom, and I went to the altar without the smallest scruple.
And I felt quite a dignified person when, on the following Sunday, I went on a confirmation visit to the parsonage in my black dress-coat.

On this occasion Susanna sat--perhaps a little on show on my account--like a grown-up lady at her own work-table in the window-seat.

When her mother went out of the room to fetch red-currant wine and cakes, I, at a sign from her, had hastily to look at her precious work-table with all the drawers, both those above and those that appeared below when she pushed the upper drawers away.

In one of these last, which she opened with an arch look, but shut again like lightning as her mother came in, lay the brass ring with glass stones in it that I had once given her, and I recognised two or three old scraps of letters dating from the time when we were children.
When I went away it was with a beating heart, for I had unexpectedly an interview in which Susanna's true feeling had been revealed to me more clearly than it could have been by any verbal assurance.
It struck me that something must lately have happened at home, for the curt, cold way in which my father used to treat me was wonderfully changed.