orrow his mother might die; to-morrow he might die himself. In any
case the death of his grandfather would have meant a profound change in
the future of his mother's life and his own; the living of Nancepean
would fall to some other priest and with it the house in which they
lived. Parson Trehawke had left nothing of any value except Gould's
_Birds of Great Britain_ and a few other works of ornithology. The
furniture of the Vicarage was rich neither in quality nor in quantity.
Three or four hundred pounds was the most his daughter could inherit.
She had spoken to Mark of their poverty, because in her dismay for the
future of her son she had no heart to pretend that the dead man's money
was of little importance.

"I must write and ask your father what we ought to do." . . . She
stopped in painful awareness of the possessive pronoun. Mark was
unresponsive, until there came the news from Africa, which made him
throw his arms about his mother's neck while she was still alive. Mrs.
Lidderdale, whatever bitterness she may once have felt for the ruin of
her married life, shed fresh tears of sorrow for her husband, and
supposing that Mark's embrace was the expression of his sympathy wept
more, as people will when others are sorry for them, and then still more
because the future for Mark seemed hopeless. How was she to educate him?
How clothe him? How feed him even? At her age where and how could she
earn money? She reproached herself with having been too ready out of
sensitiveness to sacrifice Mark to her own pride. She had had no right
to leave her husband and live in the country like this. She should have
repressed her own emotion and thought only of the family life, to the
maintenance of which by her marriage she had committed herself. At first
it had seemed the best thing for Mark; but she should have remembered
that her father could not live for ever and that one day she would have
to face the problem of life without his help and his hospitality. She
began to imagine that the disaster of that stormy night had been
contrived by God to punish her, and she prayed to Him that her
chastisement should not be increased, that at least her son might be
spared to her.

Mrs. Lidderdale was able to stay on at the Vicarage for several weeks,
because the new Vicar of Nancepean was not able to take over his charge
immediately. This delay gave her time to hold a sale of her father's
furniture, at which the desire of the neighbours to be