that he was visiting a certain medium, why had she not sent for him? Or had she sent for him? That is, had she really been the author of those remarkable letters which Huston Adley had dispatched to him and which had summoned him to Resurrection Rock? Might his mother have been the human agent behind much of that which had been to Ethel and to himself inexplicable?
He longed for Ethel to share his marvellous discovery with him. He recollected the admiration and great trust and love which Ethel had held for "Cousin Agnes"; and he thought, if she could only know that Cousin Agnes was his mother, she might feel differently about him. Of course nothing which he had yet learned disclosed the circumstances of his mother's adventure before his birth; those circumstances which remained suggested only by his ring. But it was plain that Resurrection Rock and the neighborhood of St. Florentin was the "nowhere" from which Agnes Dehan had come to Chicago. That being the case, in all likelihood the Cullens had known about her first adventure in love; likely enough it had underlain old John Cullen's dismissal of her from his office; yet his son Oliver—who also would have been told about her—had married her.
Late in the evening as it was, Barney went from the library to Scott Street and presented himself at the house which was his mother's and asked for Mrs. Wain. While waiting for the housekeeper to appear, he went into the room where hung his mother's portrait and stood reverently studying it. She had been beautiful, he repeated to himself; and much more than that: resolute, determined beyond any other woman whom he had known. The artist had caught, too, something haunting her eyes, those eyes which Barney had seen to-day
