He looked at her searchingly, and at his eyes she blanched. For she read in them his fear, and knew its echo in her own heart. It would be with them both—always; nothing could ever allay it: the estrangement that was born to-day! She saw it all! She read it all—his soul, and hers—and suffered as she had not suffered in the K’o-tang of Wu Li Chang. And her soul quailed and grew very sick before the vengeance of Wu, a greater vengeance and a more terrible even than he had planned.
We need never snatch at vengeance with our poor, feeble, fumbling hands. God always repays. And sometimes it seems as if He, like the Chinese, enforces vicarious atonement—daughters scourged for fathers, mothers for sons, and even friend for friend. But sooner or later the great ax of retribution always falls.
Basil Gregory saw the grief and the torture in his mother’s face. “Oh! well, then,” he said, strolling to the window, and standing there looking out across the bay—towards Kowloon—“that’s all right. They say he’s dead—Wu—you’ve heard it?”
“Yes.”
“I wish I knew if it’s true.”
“It is true.”
He turned back to her quickly. “How do you know, Mother? Are you dead sure?”
“I saw him die,” she said.
At that her boy came and knelt down and took her hands in his.
And she told him—just the bare facts of yesterday.