“How he has changed, though! His face shows the mark 419 of sorrow. Those drooping, sensitive lines about his mouth––they were never there before, and they are the lines of suffering. They touched my heart. I wish Hester were at home. She ought to be written to. I’ll do it as soon as I get home.”
“Peter is handsomer than he was, in spite of the lines, and, as you say, he does look more like his cousin than he used to––because of them, I think. Richard always had a debonair way with him, but he had that little, sensitive droop to the lips––not so marked as Peter’s is now––but you remember, Mary––like his mother’s.”
“Oh, mother, don’t you think Richard could be found?” Betty’s voice trailed sorrowfully over the words. She was thinking how he had suffered all this time, and wishing her heart could reach out to him and call him back to her.
“He must be, dear, if he lives.”
“Oh, yes. He’ll be found. It can be published that Peter Junior has returned, and that will bring him after a while. Peter’s physique seems to have changed as well as his face. Did you notice that backward swing of the shoulders, so like his cousin’s, when he said, ‘I could sing and shout here in this cell’? And the way he lifted his head and smiled? That beard is a horrible disguise. I must send a barber to him. He must be himself again.”
“Oh, yes, do. He stands so straight and steps so easily. His lameness seems to have quite gone,” said Mary, joyously,––but at that, Bertrand paused in his walk and looked at her, then glancing at Betty walking slowly on before, he laid his finger to his lips and took his wife’s arm, and they said no more until they reached home and Betty was in her room.
“I simply can’t think it, Bertrand. I see Peter in him. It is Peter. Of course he’s like Richard. They were always alike, and that makes him all the more Peter. No other man would have that likeness, and it goes to show that he is Peter.”
“My dear, unless the Elder sees him as we see him, the thing will have to be tried out in the courts.”
“Unless we can find Richard. Hester ought to be here. She could set them right in a moment. Trust a mother to know her own boy. I’ll write her immediately. I’ll––”