uiry; "My dear
boy, what do you know about that, pray? You are not in all your mother's
secrets."

Augustine was again silent for a moment, and he strove for self-mastery.
"If I am not in my mother's secrets," he said, "she is not in yours. She
does not know you. She doesn't know what sort of a man you are. You have
deceived her. You have made her think that you are reformed and that the
things in your life that made her leave you won't come again. But
whether you are reformed or not a man like you has no right to come near
a woman like my mother. I know that you are an evil man," said
Augustine, his face trembling more and more uncontrollably; "And my
mother is a saint."

Sir Hugh stared at him. Then he burst into a shout of laughter. "You
young fool!" he said.

Augustine's eyes were lightnings in a storm-swept sky.

"You young fool," Sir Hugh repeated, not laughing, a heavier stress
weighting each repeated word.

"Can you deny," said Augustine, "that you have always led a dissolute
life? If you do deny it it won't help you. I know it: and I've not
needed the echoes to tell me. I've always felt it in you. I've always
known you were evil."

"What if I don't deny it?" Sir Hugh inquired.

Augustine was silent, biting his quivering lips.

"What if I don't deny it?" Sir Hugh repeated. His assumption of
good-humour was gone. He, too, was scowling now. "What have you to say
then?"

"By heaven,--I say that you shall not come near my mother."

"And what if it was not because of my dissolute life she left me? What
if you've built up a cock-and-bull romance that has no relation to
reality in your empty young head? What then? Ask your mother if she left
me because of my dissolute life," said Sir Hugh.

The book in Augustine's wrenching hands had come apart with a crack and
crash. He looked down at it stupidly.

"You really should learn to control yourself--in every direction, my
dear boy," Sir Hugh remarked. "Now, unless you would like to wreak your
temper on the furniture, I think you had better sit down and be still. I
should advise you to think over the fact that saints have been known
before now to forgive sinners. And sinners may not be so bad as your
innocence imagines. Goodbye. I am going up to see your mother. I am
going to spend the night here."

Augustine stood holding the shattered book. He gazed as stupidly at Sir
Hugh as he had gazed at it. He gazed while Sir Hugh, who kept a rather
wary eye fixed on