Hugh heard her without speaking, only
now and then pressing the hand he held in
his to give her courage when she faltered.

"Oh, mother, how you have suffered in
your life!" That was his first thought
when she ceased to speak. His next
thought he was fain to utter, although it
sounded like a reproach.

"If you had but trusted my father! He
loved you so truly."

"Ah, Hugh, if I had! But it was so
terrible to me to risk losing his love. And
he often said—as you have been used to say
after him—that he could never reinstate in
his heart any one who had once been guilty
of deliberate deception. You cannot know,
you strong upright natures, how the weak
are bent and warped. You cannot—or so
I feared—make allowance for temptation,
or give credit for all the hard struggle and
combat that ends sometimes in defeat at
last."

Hugh could not quite easily get over
the revelation his mother had made. He
had struggled with himself to be gentle
with her. He would not add to her pain
by look or gesture, if he could help it.
But he knew that all was not as it had been
between them. He knew that he could
never again feel the absolute proud trust in
his mother which had been a joy to him for
so many years. Tenderness, gratitude, and
pity remained. But the past was past, and
irrevocable. The pain of this knowledge
acted as a spur to his resentment against
Mr. Frost.

"You have the paper acknowledging
this man's debt to my father?" said Hugh.

"It will not be difficult to make him
disgorge. He to patronise me, and help me,
and offer me this and that, when an act of
common honesty would have put me in a
position to help myself years ago!"

"Hugh, the dreadful idea that you hinted
at, just now, has been in my mind for some
time past, although I dared not dwell on it.
I mean the fear that he may not be able to
make immediate restitution of the money
due to you."

"Restitution or exposure: I shall give
him the choice, though I feel that even so
I am in some degree compounding with
knavery."

Mrs. Lockwood clasped and unclasped
her hands nervously.

''He always found some excuse for
putting me off all these years," she said.

"He shall not put me off, I promise
him."

"Oh, my boy, if through my cowardice
you should lose all that your poor father
worked so hard to bequeath to you!"

"We will hope better, mother dear. This
man must have enough to pay me what he
owes. It is a great deal to us, but not
much to a rich man. He has been in a
fine position for years, and the name of the
firm stands high."

"And about—about the will, and Maud's
inheritance?" stammered Mrs. Lockwood.

The calm security of her manner had
given place to a timid hesitation in addressing
Hugh, that was almost pathetic.

"Do not let us speak of that, dear mother,"
said Hugh, "or my choler will rise beyond
my power to control it. That man is a
consummate scoundrel. He was—I am
sure of it now, I suspected it then—trying
to sound me as to the probability of my
being induced to bear false witness."

"Oh, Hugh!"

"He thought it might be highly
convenient for him, and might ease his pocket
and his cares (not his conscience; that he
is not troubled with) if I——  It won't
bear thinking of."

"May you not be mistaken? And may
there not be some excuse——?"

"Excuse!" echoed Hugh.

His mother shrank back silently at the
fierce tone of his voice. He walked to the
door, and had almost passed out of the
room, when she called him: but in so low
and hesitating a tone that he stood uncertain
whether she had spoken or not.

"Did you call me, mother?" he said.

"You never left me before without a
word or a kiss, Hugh, since you were a
toddling child."

He came back at once, and took her in
his arms, and kissed her forehead fondly.
But after he was gone, she sat and cried
bitterly. A strange kind of repentance grew
up in her mind; a repentance not so much
for the evil done, as for the tardy confession
of it. Yet it had seemed, so long as the
confession was yet unspoken, and even while
she was speaking it, as if it must take a
load from her heart.

"If I had held my tongue," she thought,
"my son would have loved me, and trusted
me still. Now I am afraid to see him
again, lest I should find some change in
him, my boy whom I love better than my
life! What signified the money? I might
have let it go. He knew nothing of it, and
he would not have grieved for it. What
phantom of duty was it, that haunted and
harried me into doing this thing?"

She forgot, in the present pain of her