His wife was the first to break the silence at the dinner-table. "Has not Reginald Gower grown more manly and older-looking since we saw him last?" she said, addressing her husband.
A shade came over his face as he answered somewhat testily, "Oh, I think he looks well enough! Of course five years must have made him look older. But Reginald never was the favourite with me that he is with you, wife; a self-indulgent lad he always seems to me to be."
"Well, but surely, husband" (once she always called him father, but that was years ago now), "he is a good son, and kind to his mother."
"Well, well, I am glad to hear it. But surely we have some more interesting subject to discuss than Reginald Gower."
Mrs. Willoughby sighed. Well she knew that many a time she had a conflict in her own heart to think well of the lad who was to succeed to the beautiful estates that by right belonged to their own child.
Dinner over, she sought the quiet of her own boudoir, a room specially endeared to her by the many sweet memories of the hours that she and her loved daughter had spent together there.
The day had been a trying one to Mrs. Willoughby. Not often nowadays had they parties at Harcourt Manor, and she was tired in mind and body, and glad to be a few minutes alone with her God. She sat for a few minutes lost in thought; then rising she opened a drawer, and took from it the case which contained the miniature of a beautiful girl, on which she gazed long and lovingly. The likeness was that of the daughter she had loved so dearly, and of whose very existence she was now in doubt. Oh to see or hear of her once more! Poor mother, how her heart yearned for her loved one! Only one could comfort her, and that was the God she had learned to love. She put down the picture and opened a little brown book, the very fac-simile of the one which little Frida possessed, and which God had used and blessed in the Black Forest. Turning to the Hundred and third Psalm, she read the words, well underlined, "Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him." Then turning to the Gospel of Matthew, she read Christ's own blessed word of invitation and promise, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Ah, how many weary, burdened souls have these words helped since they were spoken and then under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost written for the comfort of weary ones in all ages! Ere she closed the book, Mrs. Willoughby read the fourth verse of the Thirty-seventh Psalm: "Delight thyself in the Lord, and he shall give thee the desire of thine heart." Then kneeling down she poured out, as she so often did, the sorrows of her heart to her heavenly Father, and rose quieted in spirit.
Ere she put away the little brown book she looked at it thoughtfully, recalling the day, not long before her daughter had left her, when they had together bought two Bibles exactly alike as regarded binding, but the one was in German, the other in English. The German Bible she had given to her daughter, who presented the English one to her mother. On the fly-leaf of the one she held in her hand were written the words, "To my much-loved mother, from Hilda." Ah, where was that daughter now? And if she still possessed the little brown German Bible, had she learned to love and prize its words as her mother had done her English Bible? Then carefully locking up her treasured book and portraits, she went downstairs, to wait in solitary grandeur for her husband's coming into the drawing-room.