required to make a
night of it,

She was silent; for to rouse her tyrant was more than she dare do.
If awakened, he would crave for brandy and water; and if he got that
sweet poison, he would probably become furious. She stood for half a
minute; and Tom, who knew her story well, watched her curiously.

"She is a fine woman: and with a far finer heart in her than that
brute. Her eyebrow and eye, now, have the true Siddons' stamp;
the great white forehead, and sharp-cut little nostril, breathing
scorn--and what a Siddons-like attitude!--I should like, madam, to see
the child again before I go."

"If you are fit, sir," answered she.

"Brave woman; comes to the point at once, I am a poor doctor, madam,
and not a country gentleman; and have neither money nor health to
spend in drinking too much wine."

"Then why do you encourage him in it, sir? I had expected a very
different sort of conduct from you, sir."

Tom did not tell her what she would not (no woman will) understand;
that it is morally and socially impossible to escape from the table of
a fool, till either he or you are conquered; and she was too shrewd to
be taken in by commonplace excuses; so he looked her very full in
the face, and replied a little haughtily, with a slow and delicate
articulation, using his lips more than usual, and yet compressing
them:--

"I beg your pardon, madam, if I have unintentionally displeased you:
but if you ever do me the honour of knowing more of me, you will be
the first to confess that your words are unjust. Do you wish me to see
your son, or do you not?"

Poor Mrs. Trebooze looked at him, with an eye which showed that
she had been accustomed to study character keenly, perhaps in
self-defence. She saw that Tom was sober; he had taken care to prove
that, by the way in which he spoke; and she saw, too, that he was a
better bred man than her husband, as well as a cleverer. She dropped
her eye before his; heaved something very like a sigh; and then
said, in her curt, fierce tone, which yet implied a sort of sullen
resignation--

"Yes; come up-stairs."

Tom went up, and looked at the boy again, as he lay sleeping. A
beautiful child of four years old, as large and fair a child as man
need see; and yet there was on him the curse of his father's sins; and
Tom knew it, and knew that his mother knew it also.

"What a noble boy!" said he, after looking, not without honest
admiration, upon the sleeping child, who had kicked off