"Yes, we had a few peaceful years here, before death took him from me, and while our boy was growing in strength and beauty."
"And in these long years of widowhood music has been your comforter. In your devotion to art you have lived the higher life."
"Yes," she answered, with an inspired look, striking a triumphant chord, "music has been my comforter—music has conjured back my dead father, my lost lover. Music has been my life and my hope."
CHAPTER XI.
THE MASTER OF DISCOMBE.
Mrs. Wornock's frank revelation of her girlish love and self-sacrifice lifted a burden from Allan's heart and mind. He had been interested in her, and attracted towards her from that first summer noontide when he studied her thoughtful face in the village church, and when he lingered among the villagers' graves to hear her play. His sympathy had grown with every hour he spent in her society, and he had been deeply grateful for the friendship which had so cordially included him and the girl he loved. It had been very painful to him to believe that this sweet-mannered woman belonged to the fallen ones of the earth, that her graces were the graces of a Magdalen, most painful to think that she was no fitting companion for the girl who had so readily responded to her friendly advances.
The cloud was lifted now, and he felt ashamed of all his past doubts and suspicions. He respected Mrs. Wornock for her refusal to meet his father in the beaten way of friendship. He was touched by the devotion which had brought her creeping to his windows under the cover of night to look upon the face of her beloved. He resolved that he would do all that in him lay to atone for the wrong his thoughts had done her, that he would be to her, indeed, as a second son, and that he would cultivate her son's friendship in a brotherly spirit.
He stopped in the corridor on the morning after that interview to study the portrait of the young man whose likeness to himself had now resolved itself into a psychological mystery, and he could but see that it was a likeness of the mind rather than of the flesh, a resemblance in character and expression far more than in actual lineaments.
"He is vastly my superior in looks," thought Allan, as he studied the lines of that boldly painted face. "He has his mother's finely chiselled features, his mother's delicate colouring. There is a shade of effeminacy, otherwise the face would be almost faultless. And to mistake this face for that! Absurd!" muttered Allan, catching the reflection of his sunburnt forehead, and strongly marked nose and chin, in the Venetian glass that hung at right angles with the picture.
He heard the organ while the butler paused with his hand on the door, waiting to announce the visitor. The simpler music, the weaker touch, told him that the pupil was playing.