heroism and
unscrupulousness.

The first sense of security following on Winnie's marriage wore off in
time (for nothing lasts), and Mrs Verloc's mother, in the seclusion of
the back bedroom, had recalled the teaching of that experience which the
world impresses upon a widowed woman. But she had recalled it without
vain bitterness; her store of resignation amounted almost to dignity.
She reflected stoically that everything decays, wears out, in this world;
that the way of kindness should be made easy to the well disposed; that
her daughter Winnie was a most devoted sister, and a very self-confident
wife indeed. As regards Winnie's sisterly devotion, her stoicism
flinched. She excepted that sentiment from the rule of decay affecting
all things human and some things divine. She could not help it; not to
do so would have frightened her too much. But in considering the
conditions of her daughter's married state, she rejected firmly all
flattering illusions. She took the cold and reasonable view that the
less strain put on Mr Verloc's kindness the longer its effects were
likely to last. That excellent man loved his wife, of course, but he
would, no doubt, prefer to keep as few of her relations as was consistent
with the proper display of that sentiment. It would be better if its
whole effect were concentrated on poor Stevie. And the heroic old woman
resolved on going away from her children as an act of devotion and as a
move of deep policy.

The "virtue" of this policy consisted in this (Mrs Verloc's mother was
subtle in her way), that Stevie's moral claim would be strengthened. The
poor boy--a good, useful boy, if a little peculiar--had not a sufficient
standing. He had been taken over with his mother, somewhat in the same
way as the furniture of the Belgravian mansion had been taken over, as if
on the ground of belonging to her exclusively. What will happen, she
asked herself (for Mrs Verloc's mother was in a measure imaginative),
when I die? And when she asked herself that question it was with dread.
It was also terrible to think that she would not then have the means of
knowing what happened to the poor boy. But by making him over to his
sister, by going thus away, she gave him the advantage of a directly
dependent position. This was the more subtle sanction of Mrs Verloc's
mother's heroism and unscrupulousness. Her act of abandonment was really
an arrangement for settling her son permanently in life. Ot