without being questioned i that � oh that was court a place there had been a fine sight of about back the heir of the name had somehow way the estate and it fell to the very distant connections who only called themselves because they had got the estate but the claim had been disputed over and over again and the coachman if he had been asked would have said though he might have to fall down dead the next minute that property didn t always get into the right hands however the lawyers had found their luck in it and people who inherited estates that were about often lived in them as poorly as a in a hollow cheese and by what he could make out that had been the way with these present or as they called them p selves as for was as poor half a fellow as you d wish to see but she was master had come of a high family and had a spirit � yon might see it in her eye and the way she sat her horse forty years ago when she came into this country they said she was a but her family was poor and so she took up with a faced fellow like this and the eldest son had been just such another as his father only a wild sort of half natural who got into bad company they said his mother hated him and wished him dead for she d got another son quite of a different cut who had gone to foreign parts when he was a and she wanted her favorite to be heir but heir or no heir lawyer the radical husband her eldest bom and the loneliness of her life but to have at her side a rich clever possibly a tender son yes but there were the fifteen years of separation and all that had happened in long time to throw her the back ground in her son s and affection and did not men sometimes become more filial in their feeling when experience had them and they had themselves become fathers still if mrs had expected only her son she would have trembled less she expected a little also and there were reasons why she had not been when her son had written to her only when he was on the eve of returning that he already had an heir bom to him but the facts must be accepted as they stood and after all the chief thing was to have her son back again such pride such affection such hopes as she cherished in this fifty sixth year of her life must find their gratification in him � or nowhere once more she glanced at the portrait the young brown eyes seemed to dwell on her pleasantly bat turning from it with a sort of impatience and saying aloud of coarse he will be altered i she rose almost with difficulty and walked more slowly than before across the hall to the entrance door already the sound of wheels was loud upon the gravel the momentary surprise of seeing that it was only a post chaise without a servant or much luggage that was passing under the stone and then round against the flight of stone steps was at once in the sense that there was a dark face under a red cap looking at her from the window she saw nothing else she was not even that the small go up of her own servants had or that old the butler had forward to open the chaise door she heard herself called mother and felt a light kiss on each cheek but stronger than all that sensation was the consciousness which no previous thought could prepare her for that this son who had come back to her was a stranger three minutes before she had fancied that in spite of all changes wrought by fifteen years of separation she should clasp her son again as she had done at their parting but in the moment when their eyes met the sense of strangeness came upon her like a terror it was not hard to understand that she was agitated and the son led her across the hall to the sitting room closing the door behind them then he turned toward her and said smiling you would not have known me eh mother it was perhaps the if she had seen him in a crowd she might have looked at him without recognition � not however without startled wonder for though the likeness to herself was no longer striking the years had it with another likeness which would have arrested her before she answered him his eyes with a keen restlessness as unlike as possible to the lingering gaze of the portrait had quickly over the room on her again as she said every thing is changed i am an old woman you see but and more upright than some of the young ones said inwardly however feeling that age had made his mother s face veiy anxious and eager the old women at are like ve not got clumsy and how is it i have the trick of getting fat here lifted his arm and spread out his plump hand i remember my father was as thin as a how is my father where is he mrs just pointed to the doorway and let her son pass through it alone she was not given to tears but now under the pressure of emotion that could find no other vent they burst forth she took care that they should be silent tears and before came out of the library again they were dried mrs some had not the feminine tendency to seek influence through pathos she had been used to rule in virtue of acknowledged superiority the consciousness that she had to make her son s acquaintance and that her knowledge 