"Peter is a boy," said John, "and life is just opening for him. It is a hard saying to you, but his thoughts are full of the world he is entering. There is no room in them just now for the home he is leaving. That is human nature. If he be sick or sorry later on—as I know your loving fancy pictures him—his heart would turn even then, not to the mother he saw waving and weeping on the quay, amid all the confusion of departure, but to the mother of his childhood, of his happy days of long ago. It may be "—John hesitated, and spoke very tenderly—"it may be that his heart will be all the softer then, because he was denied the parting interview he never sought. The young are strangely wayward and impatient. They regret what might have been. They do not, like the old, dwell fondly upon what the gods actually granted them. It is you who will suffer from this sacrifice, not Peter; that will be some consolation to you, I suppose, even if it be also a disappointment."
"Ah, how you understand!" said Peter's mother, sadly.
"Perhaps because, as you said just now, I have been a young man too," he said, forcing a smile. "Oh, forgive me, but let me save you; for I believe that if you deserted your husband to-day, you would sorrow for it to the end of your life."
"And Peter—" she murmured.
He came to her side, and straightened himself, and spoke hopefully.
"Give me your last words and your last gifts—and a letter—for Peter, and send me in your stead to-night. I will deliver them faithfully. I will tell him—for he should be told—of the sore straits in which you find yourself. Set him this noble example of duty, and believe me, it will touch his heart more nearly than even that sacred parting which you desire."
Lady Mary held out her hand to him.
"Tell Sir Timothy that I will stay," she whispered.
John bent down and kissed the little hand in silence, and with profound respect.
Then he went to the study without looking back.