e loss you were incurring; of my own purpose I should have refrained
from doing so, and Mr. Mutimer forbade me to appeal to anything but your
better self. If you would not come to me because I wished it, I could
not involve you and myself in shame by seeing you yield to sordid
motives.'

Hubert raised his head. A choking voice kept him silent for a moment
only.

'Mother, the loss is nothing to you; you are above regrets of that kind;
and for myself, I am almost glad to have lost it.'

'In very truth,' answered the mother, 'I care little about the wealth
you might have possessed. What I do care for is the loss of all the
hopes I had built upon you. I thought you honour itself; I thought you
high-minded. Young as you are, I let you go from me without a fear.
Hubert, I would have staked my life that no shadow of disgrace would
ever fall upon your head! You have taken from me the last comfort of my
age.'

He uttered words she could not catch.

'The purity of your soul was precious to me,' she continued, her accents
struggling against weakness; 'I thought I had seen in you a love of that
chastity without which a man is nothing; and I ever did my best to keep
your eyes upon a noble ideal of womanhood. You have fallen. The simpler
duty, the point of every-day honour, I could not suppose that you would
fail in. From the day when you came of age, when Mr. Mutimer spoke to
you, saying that in every respect you would be as his son, and you, for
your part, accepted what he offered, you owed it to him to respect the
lightest of his reasonable wishes. The wish which was supreme in him
you have utterly disregarded. Is it that you failed to understand him? I
have thought of late of a way you had now and then when you spoke to
me about him; it has occurred to me that perhaps you did him less than
justice. Regard his position and mine, and tell me whether you think he
could have become so much to us if he had not been a gentleman in the
highest sense of the word. When Godfrey first of all brought me that
proposal from him that we should still remain in this house, it seemed
to me the most impossible thing. You know what it was that induced me to
assent, and what led to his becoming so intimate with us. Since then it
has been hard for me to remember that he was not one of our family. His
weak points it was not difficult to discover; but I fear you did
not understand what was noblest in his character. Uprightness,
clean-heartedness,