Manor, as well as a shortcut to Lawford Chase, Godfrey Pavely's larger property.Mrs. Tropenell had been touched, perhaps in her secret heart little surprised, at the pleasure--one might almost have said the enthusiasm--with which her neighbours for miles round had welcomed Oliver home again, after what had been so long an absence from England. The fact that he had come back a very wealthy man, and that during those years of eclipse he had managed to do some of them good turns, of course counted in his popularity, and she was too open-eyed a woman not to be well aware of that.

The mother knew that her son was not the downright, rather transparent, good-natured fellow that he was now taken to be. No man she had ever known--and she had ever been one of those women of whom men make a confidant--could keep his own or another's secrets more closely than could Oliver. He had once written to her the words: "You are the only human being, mother, to whom I ever tell anything," and she had instinctively known this to be true.

Yet their relationship was more like that of two friends than of mother and son. She knew all there was to know of his thoughts, and of his doubts, concerning many of the great things which trouble and disturb most thinking modern men. Of the outward life he led in the Mexican stretch of country of which he had become the administrator and practical ruler, she also knew a great deal, indeed surprisingly much, for he wrote by each mail long, full letters; and the romance of his great business had become an ever continuous source of interest, of amusement, and of pride to the mother who now only lived for him.

But of those secret things which had moved his heart, warred with his passions, perchance seared his conscience, he had never told her anything. Only once had the impenetrable mist of reserve been lightened, as it were pierced for a moment--and that was now a long time ago, on his second visit home five years before. He had then come to England meaning to stay a month. But at the end of ten days he had received a telegram--what he called, in the American fashion, a cable--and within an hour he had gone, saying as he kissed his mother good-bye, "A friend of mine--a woman who has been ill a long time--is now dying. I must go, even if I'm not in time to see her alive."

In the letters which had followed his return to Mexico, there had been no word more--nothing even implying sorrow, or a sense of loss--only a graver note, of which the mother might have remained unaware but for that clue he had left to sink deep in her mother-heart.

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