Page:Henry Northcote (IA henrynorthcote00snairich).pdf/372

 Northcote at last. "I shall ask you to give me the pledge from your own lips that you will always believe in me as completely as you do at this moment, whatever doubts, charges, or suspicion the future hurls against me."

"It is not necessary for me to give this assurance, but, since you demand it, I give it."

"It is part of my weakness to demand it," said her son, "although none is so well aware as am I that there is no need to give expression to your faith."

"As you say, there is no need. But I remember your father saying to me shortly before that illness which was fatal to him, the greater the gifts the greater the lenity to be meted out to their unhappy possessors. On that account I have always treated you with more indulgence than otherwise I should have done."

"Had you been more Spartan you might have strangled the genie at its birth."

"I might."

"And yet made of its possessor a more upright and God-fearing citizen."

"That is impossible."

"You never could conceive of his being other than you see him now?"

"I could not."

"Even if the indelible evidence were laid before you?"

"Evidence is never indelible to us. So-called facts have no worth in our eyes. We believe or we do not believe. Nothing changes our emotions; they are what we understand by religion."

"You speak for wise and great women."