She had been a faithful and devoted companion of his home life, making that home as pleasant and attractive to him as she could.
Perhaps if his life had been entirely passed at home she might not have made it quite an elysium for him; but let that pass. With regard to her love for her son—of that anon.
Percy Maitland had entered upon the sixteenth year of his life. He looked old for his age. Neither in form nor in feature did he resemble his father or his mother. He was tall, like his mother, and, like her, handsome, and there the likeness ended.
He was of a light, ruddy complexion; his hair, floating about his shapely head in wavy masses, was a rich, golden auburn in color; his eyes were blue as sapphires; his brow high, broad and full, with the lower features in symmetrical keeping.
The whole face, in short, was a picture of manly beauty. It was a face to admire, a face to love, and, above and beyond all, it was most emphatically a face to trust.
Falsehood and deceit, treachery and cunning, together with all the baser passions and instincts of human nature, were as foreign to that face as is darkness to the full blaze of noonday. His youth gave ample promise of a strong and vigorous manhood.
Whatever may have been the feelings of the mother toward her son, his father had loved him with a love bordering on passion.
He had been proud of his boy’s beauty and proud of his surpassing intellectual qualities; and when Percy had decided that he would not sail in the brig as one of her crew—that he could not find it in his heart to become a smuggler—the chieftain had seen the curate of the village church, a finished scholar, and engaged him to be private tutor to his boy. And so it had been.
Strangely enough, the mother had fought against all this. She had insisted upon it—had put forth all her influence to that end—that the boy should follow the fortunes of his father, and be ready, when the time should come, to take command of the smuggler brig.
But she had pleaded and labored in vain. The love of the father had been proof against all opposing forces.