“No, no, my son. From your hands his punishment would be sinful revenge. From the hands of the law which has seized him it will be retributive justice. Roland, how much, if anything, can you remember of your infancy, before you were cast upon these shores?” she suddenly inquired.
“Not much very clearly, dear mother. But I do remember a country place, where there were many cows and some calves, fruit trees, flowers and a house covered all over with flowering vines. I remember a rosy-cheeked woman in a white cap and white apron, who used to wash and dress me, and another little boy of about my age, and give us our milk and bread in a room that had a bright red brick floor.”
“Nothing more, Roland?”
“Oh, yes. I remember something that used to make a grand holiday for us, a great lady who used to come to see us, and bring cakes and sugar plums and toys and clothes. Then I remember being in a ship on the sea for many days, but cannot recall how I got there, or how I came away. These reminiscences I have often told to Aunt Sibby, but neither she nor I could ever make out by much study where that home of my infancy could have been located, or what seas I had sailed over.”
“And did no face, no voice here ever associate itself with those earlier memories?” inquired the mother.
“Yes,” replied the young man. “I was but four years old when I last beheld the face of the beautiful woman who visited me at intervals, and whom I had been taught to call my aunt. But this last occasion was fixed in my memory from the childish delight I found in the hobby-horse she had brought down for me, and also by something very opposite that—my distress at seeing her great griefs and paroxysms of sobs and tears at leaving me. These impressed the lady’s face and voice indelibly on my memory, so that the image and the tone survived everything else in my picture of the past. I was ten years old when I first saw ‘Mrs. Force’ at our school examination, but her face and her voice troubled me with fancies that they had both once been familiar and beloved. Mother! I remembered your presence in the home of my infancy, though I remembered little else about it; and I recalled your face and voice when I met you again six years later on this other side of the world, though I could not identify you with the angel of my fancy. Yet I always loved you in both characters, though I never ventured to show my affection; and I somehow perceived your love for me, though you never showed it!”
“A veil was between us,” said Elfrida Force.
“Yes, a veil; but so thin that we saw each other through it. Why, mother, dear, even our little Rosemary perceived this, for she often told me that she believed you loved her for my sake more than for her own. To-day she told me that when she was in distress on my account, it was only to you she could go for sympathy.”
“And that was true,” murmured the lady.
“And, mother, dear, what treasures I have realized in my new-found sisters. Odalite—always kind to me because Leonidas loved me—Odalite has been most affectionate to-day. Wynnette—charming Wynnette—has been so openly fond of me as to rouse the jealousy of Mr. Samuel Grandiere, who remonstrated in elegant style this way: ‘Drot it all, Wynnette! You make more of Roland than you ever did of me, though I am to be your husband.’”