"Yes, it
is hard to part with our children: but when grief is over, we live in the
consolation that they have only gone before us to a better place, where
sin and sorrow are not. We shall join them later."
She went away, tears of joy filling her eyes. _She_ had a son up there,
waiting for _her_; and she knew Lord Hartledon meant her to think of him
when he had so spoken.
"Carr," said Val, "I never told you the finale of that tragedy. George
Gordon of the mutiny, did turn up: he lived and died in England."
"No!"
"He died at Calne. It was that poor woman's son."
Mr. Carr looked round for an explanation. He knew her as the wife of
clerk Gum, and sister to Hartledon's housekeeper. Val told him all, as
the facts had come out to him.
"Pike always puzzled me," he said. "Disguised as he was with his black
hair, his face stained with some dark juice, there was a look in him that
used to strike some chord in my memory. It lay in the eyes, I think.
You'll keep these facts sacred, Carr, for the parents' sake. They are
known only to four of us."
"Have you told your wife yet?" questioned Mr. Carr, recurring to a
different subject.
"No. I could not, somehow, whilst the child lay dead in the house. She
shall know it shortly."
"And what about dismissing the countess-dowager? You will do it?"
"I shall be only too thankful to do it. All my courage has come back to
me, thank Heaven!"
The Countess-Dowager of Kirton's reign was indeed over; never would he
allow her to disturb the peace of his house again.
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