impatiently of his debt to his coarse shrewish
landlady, and of the small liabilities which hampered
him as effectually as the great one. It was later
than his usual hour of rising, and he felt ill and
despondent: not anxious to face the gay, rich,
busy world outside, and still less inclined for
his own company and waking thoughts in
the shabby little den he tenanted. A small
room, a mere apology for a sitting-room,
was reached through a rickety folding-door,
which no human ingenuity could contrive to
keep shut, if any one opened the other door
leading to the narrow passage, and the top of
the steep dark staircase. Through this yawning
aperture George lounged disconsolately
into the little room beyond, eyeing with strong
disfavour the preparations for his breakfast,
which preparations chiefly consisted of a dirty
tablecloth and a portion of a stale loaf,
popularly known as a "heel." But his gaze travelled
further, and brightened; for on the cracked
and blistered wooden chimney-piece lay a letter
in his mother's hand. He darted at it, and
opened it eagerly, then held it for a moment in
his hand unread. His face turned very pale,
and he caught his breath once or twice as he
muttered:

"Suppose it's to say she can't do anything
at all." But the fear, the suspense were over
with the first glance at his mother's letter. She
wrote:

"Poynings, 13th April, 1861.

"My dear George. I have succeeded in
procuring you the money, for which you tell
me you have such urgent need. Perhaps if I
admired, and felt disposed to act up to a lofty
standard of sentimental generosity, I should
content myself with making this announcement,
and sending you the sum which you assure me
will release you from your difficulties, and
enable you to commence the better life on which
you have led me to hope you are resolved.
But, not only do the circumstances under which
I have contrived to get this money for you,
make it impossible for me to act in this way,
but I consider I should be very wrong, and
quite wanting in my duty, if I failed to make
you understand, at the cost of whatever pain
to myself, the price I have had to pay for the
power of aiding you.

"You have occasioned me much suffering,
George. You, my only child, to whom I looked
in the first dark days of my early bereavement,
with such hope and pride as I cannot express,
and as only a mother can understand—you
have darkened my darkness and shadowed my
joy, you have been the source of my deepest
anxiety, though not the less for that, as you
well know, the object of my fondest love. I
don't write this to reproach you—I don't
believe in the efficacy of reproach; but merely
to tell you the truth—to preface another
truth, the full significance of which it may prove
very beneficial to you to understand. Sorrow
I have known through you, and shame I
have experienced for you. You have cost me
many tears, whose marks can never be effaced
from my face or my heart; you have cost me
infinite disappointment, bitterness, heart-sickness,
and domestic wretchedness; but now, for the first
time, you cost me shame on my own account.
Many and great as my faults and short-comings
have been through life, deceit was equally
abhorrent to my nature and foreign to my habits.
But for you, George, for your sake, to help you
in this strait, to enable you to release yourself
from the trammels in which you are held, I
have descended to an act of deceit and
meanness, the recollection of which must for ever
haunt me with a keen sense of humiliation.
I retain enough of my former belief in you, my
son, to hope that what no other argument has
been able to effect, this confession on my part
may accomplish, and that you, recognising the
price at which I have so far rescued you,
may pause, and turn from, the path leading
downward into an abyss of ruin, from which
no effort of mine could avail to snatch you. I
have procured the money you require, by an
expedient suggested to me accidentally, just when
I had begun utterly to despair of ever being
able to accomplish my ardent desire, by a
conversation which took place at dinner between
Mr. Carruthers and his family solicitor, Mr.
Tatham. The conversation turned on a curious
and disgraceful family story which had come
under his knowledge lately. I need not trouble
you to read, nor myself to write, its details;
you will learn them when I see you, and give
you the money; and I do not doubt, I dare not
doubt, George, that you will feel all I expect you
to feel, when you learn to how deliberate,
laborious, and mean a deception I have descended
for your sake. I can never do the same thing
again; the expedient is one that it is only
possible to use once, and which is highly
dangerous even in that one instance. So, if
even you were bad and callous enough to
calculate upon a repetition of it, which I
could not believe, my own dear boy, I am
bound to tell you that it never could be.
Unless Mr. Carruthers should change his
mind, consequent upon an entire, radical, and
most happy change in your conduct, all
pecuniary assistance on my part must be entirely
impossible. I say this, thus strongly, out of
the kindest and best motives towards you.
Your unexpected appearance and application
agitated and distressed me very much; not but
that the sight of you, under any circumstances,
must always give me pleasure, however closely
pursued and overtaken by pain. For several
days I was so completely upset by the recollection
of your visit, and the strong and desperate
necessity that existed for repressing all traces
of such feelings, that I was unable to think over
the expedients by which I might procure the
money you required. Then as I began to grow
a little quieter, accident gave me the hint upon
which I have acted secretly and safely. Come
down to Poynings in three days from this time.
Mr. Carruthers is at present away at an
agricultural meeting at York, and I can see you at
Amherst, without difficulty or danger. Go to the