"
There came the interruption of the hotel luncheon, after which a room
was engaged for Janet, and the use of a private parlour secured for
the afternoon and evening. Jock came and went. He was very much
excited about the frightful reports he heard of the ravages of yellow
fever in the south, and went in search of medical papers and reports.
Janet directed him where to seek them. "I was just starting to offer
myself as an attendant," she said. "I shall still go, to-morrow."
"You? Oh, Janet, not now!" was her mother's first exclamation.
"You will understand when you have read," quietly said Janet.
All that afternoon, according to her manifest wish, her mother was
reading that confession of hers, while she sat by replying to each
question or comment, in the repose of a confidence such as had not
existed for fifteen years.
"Magnum Bonum," wrote Janet. "So my father named it. Alas! it has
been Magnum Malum to me. I have thought over how the evil began. I
think it must have been when I brooded over the words I caught at my
father's death-bed, instead of confessing to my mother that I had
overheard them. It might be reserve and dread of her grief, but it
was not wholly so. I did not respect her as I ought in my childish
conceit.
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