CHAPTER III.
A PAGE OF ANCIENT HISTORY Before we can bring happiness to others, we must first be happy ourselves; nor will happiness abide within us unless we confer it on others .-- MAETERLINCK.
During the preceding hour or two Malcolm's face had worn its brightest and most youthful aspect--the society of Cedric had roused him and taken him out of himself; but as he approached the handsome and imposing-looking house where his mother lived, his countenance resumed its normal gravity.
To him it had been a house of bondage, and he had never regarded it as a home; his environment from boyhood had not suited him, and though he loved his mother, and gave her, at least outwardly, the obedience and honour that were due to her, there had not been that sympathy between them that one would have expected from an only son to a widowed mother.
Malcolm's father had died when he was about six years old, but his infant recollections of him were wonderfully vivid.

He remembered waking up one night from some childish dream that had frightened him, to see a kind face bending over him, and to feel warm, strong arms lifting him up.
"Never mind, Sonny, father's with you," he heard a cheery voice say.
"Daddy's wid baby," he repeated drowsily, as he nestled down in his father's arms.

"Nice, nice daddy," and two hot little hands patted his face.
Then a voice in the distance said, "You are spoiling him, Rupert.
Malcolm ought to be a brave boy and not cry on account of a silly dream." Of course it was his mother who spoke; even from his infancy her method of education had been bracing.

"Baby isn't a boy, movver," he had once said in extenuation of some childish fault; "movver must not punish Baby." The memories of early childhood are always vague and hazy; but in the distance, among shifting forms and changing prospects, there was always a big, big figure, with kind eyes and strong arms, looming largely in his recollection.
"If my father had lived, I know we should have been such friends," Malcolm would sigh to himself in his growing youth; and though his mother never suspected it, he often looked at his father's portrait that hung in her dressing-room, until his eyes were full of tears.

"If father had lived, I shouldn't have been so lonely and out of it all," he would say as he turned away with a quivering lip.
Mrs.Herrick tried to do her duty by the boy; but she was a busy woman, and had no leisure to devote to his amusement.