If the defacing marks she had seen
meant that the cause of separation between father and son lay in
some past fault of Oliver himself, serious enough for such a
symbol to be necessary to reconcile the judge to their divided
lives, she should know it and know it soon. The night should not
pass without that review of the past by which alone she could now
judge Oliver Ostrander.
She had spoken of him as noble; she had forced herself to believe
him so, and in profession and in many of his actions he had been
so, but had she ever been wholly pleased with him? To go back to
their first meeting, what impression had he made upon her then?
Had it been altogether favourable and such as would be natural in
one of his repute? Hardly; but then the shock of her presentation
to one who had possibly seen her under other and shameful
conditions had been great, and her judgment could scarcely have
full play while her whole attention was absorbed in watching for
some hint of recognition on his part.
But when this apprehension had vanished; when quite assured that
he had failed to see in the widowed Mrs. Averill the wife of the
man who had died a felon's death in Shelby, had her spirits risen
and her eyes cleared to his great merits as she had heard them
extolled by people of worth and intellectual standing? Alas, no.
There had been something in his look--a lack of spontaneity which
had not fitted in with her expectations.
And in the months which followed, when as Reuther's suitor she saw
him often and intimately--how had she regarded him then? More
leniently of course.
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