CHAPTER XIV.
At noon of the following day the senator went to the women's room, and while he was still on the threshold, he asked his wife--who was busy at the loom: "Where is Polykarp?
I did not find him with Antonius, who is working at the placing of the altar, and I thought I might find him here." "After going to the church," said Dorothea, "he went up the mountain.

Go down to the workshops, Marthana, and see if your brother has come back." Her daughter obeyed quickly and gladly, for her brother was to her the dearest, and seemed to her to be the best, of men.

As soon as the pair were alone together Petrus said, while he held out his hand to his wife with genial affection, "Well, mother--shake hands." Dorothea paused for an instant, looking him in the face, as if to ask him, "Does your pride at last allow you to cease doing me an injustice ?" It was a reproach, but in truth not a severe one, or her lips would hardly have trembled so tenderly, as she said.
"You cannot be angry with me any longer, and it is well that all should once more be as it ought." All certainly had not been "as it ought," for since the husband and wife had met in Polykarp's work-room, they had behaved to each other as if they were strangers.

In their bedroom, on the way to church, and at breakfast, they had spoken to each no more than was absolutely necessary, or than was requisite in order to conceal their difference from the servants and children.

Up to this time, an understanding had always subsisted between them that had never taken form in words, and yet that had scarcely in a single case been infringed, that neither should ever praise one of their children for anything that the other thought blameworthy, and vice versa.
But in this night, her husband had followed up her severest condemnation by passionately embracing the wrong-doer.