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was silent.

      ‘Unless,’ she continued—‘unless I have your promise that you will no longer dishonour yourself.’

      He rose from her side and stood in front of the fire; his mother looked and saw that he trembled.

      ‘No promise, Hubert,’ she said, ‘that you cannot keep. Rather than that, we will accept our fate, and be nothing to each other.’

      ‘You know very well, mother, that that is impossible. I cannot speak to you of what drove me to disregard your letters. I love and honour you, and shall have to change my nature before I cease to do so.’

      ‘To me, Hubert, you seem already to have changed. I scarcely know you.’

      ‘I can’t defend myself to you,’ he said sadly. ‘We think so differently on subjects which allow of no compromise, that, even if I could speak openly, you would only condemn me the more.’

      His mother turned upon him a grief-stricken and wondering face.

      ‘Since when have we differed so?’ she asked. ‘What has made us strangers to each other’s thoughts? Surely, surely you are at one with me in condemning all that has led to this? If your character has been too weak to resist temptation, you cannot have learnt to make evil your good?’

      He kept silence.

      ‘You refuse me that last hope?’

      Hubert moved impatiently.

      ‘Mother, I can’t see beyond to-day! I know nothing of what is before me. It is the idlest trifling with words to say one will do this or that, when action in no way depends on one’s own calmer thought. In this moment I could promise anything you ask; if I had my choice, I would be a child again and have no desire but to do your will, to be worthy in your eyes. I hate my life and the years that have parted me from you. Let us talk no more of it.’

      Neither spoke again for some moments; then Hubert asked coldly—

      ‘What has been done?’

      ‘Nothing,’ replied Mrs. Eldon, in the same tone. ‘Mr. Yottle has waited for your return before communicating with the relatives in London.’

      ‘I will go to Belwick in the morning,’ he said. Then, after reflection, ‘Mr. Mutimer told you that he had destroyed his will?’

      ‘No. He had it from Mr. Yottle two days before his death, and on the day after—the Monday—Mr. Yottle was to have come to receive instructions for a new one. It is nowhere to be found: of course it was destroyed.’

      ‘I suppose there is no doubt of that?’ Hubert asked, with a show of indifference.

      ‘There can be none. Mr. Yottle tells me that a will which existed. before Godfrey’s marriage was destroyed in the same way.’

      ‘Who is the heir?’

      ‘A great-nephew bearing the same name. The will contained provision for him and certain of his family. Wanley is his; the personal property will be divided among several.’

      ‘The people have not come forward?’

      ‘We presume they do not even know of Mr. Mutimer’s death. There has been no direct communication between him and them for many years.’

      Hubert’s next question was, ‘What shall you do, mother?’

      ‘Does it interest you, Hubert? I am too feeble to move very far. I must find a home either here in the village or at Agworth.’

      He looked at her with compassion, with remorse.

      ‘And you, my boy?’ asked his mother, raising her eyes gently.

      ‘I? Oh, the selfish never come to harm, be sure! Only the gentle and helpless have to suffer; that is the plan of the world’s ruling.’

      ‘The world is not ruled by one who thinks our thoughts, Hubert.’

      He had it on his lips to make a rejoinder, but checked the impulse.

      ‘Say good-night to me,’ his mother continued. ‘You must go and rest. If you still feel unwell in the morning, a messenger shall go to Belwick. You are very, very pale.’

      Hubert held his hand to her and bent his head. Mrs. Eldon offered her cheek; he kissed it and went from the room.

      At seven o’clock on the following morning a bell summoned a servant to Hubert’s bedroom. Though it was daylight, a lamp burned near the bed; Hubert lay against pillows heaped high.

      ‘Let someone go at once for Dr. Manns,’ he said, appearing to speak with difficulty. ‘I wish to see him as soon as possible. Mrs. Eldon is to know nothing of his visit—you understand me!’

      The servant withdrew. In rather less than an hour the doctor made his appearance, with every sign of having been interrupted in his repose. He was a spare man, full bearded and spectacled.

      ‘Something wrong?’ was his greeting as he looked keenly at his summoner. ‘I didn’t know you were here.’

      ‘Yes,’ Hubert replied, ‘something is confoundedly wrong. I have been playing strange tricks in the night, I fancy.’

      ‘Fever?’

      ‘As a consequence of something else. I shall have to tell you what must be repeated to no one, as of course you will see. Let me see, when was it?—Saturday to-day? Ten days ago, I had a pistol-bullet just here,’—he touched his right side. ‘It was extracted, and I seemed to be not much the worse. I have just come from Germany.’

      Dr. Manns screwed his face into an expression of sceptical amazement.

      ‘At present,’ Hubert continued, trying to laugh, ‘I feel considerably the worse. I don’t think I could move if I tried. In a few minutes, ten to one, I shall begin talking foolery. You must keep people away; get what help is needed. I may depend upon you?’

      The doctor nodded, and, whistling low, began an examination.

      CHAPTER III

      On the dun borderland of Islington and Hoxton, in a corner made by the intersection of the New North Road and the Regent’s Canal, is discoverable an irregular triangle of small dwelling-houses, bearing the name of Wilton Square. In the midst stands an amorphous structure, which on examination proves to be a very ugly house and a still uglier Baptist chapel built back to back. The pair are enclosed within iron railings, and, more strangely, a circle of trees, which in due season do veritably put forth green leaves. One side of the square shows a second place of worship, the resort, as an inscription declares, of ‘Welsh Calvinistic Methodists.’ The houses are of one storey, with kitchen windows looking upon small areas; the front door is reached by an ascent of five steps.

      The canal—maladetta e sventurata fossa—stagnating in utter foulness between coal-wharfs and builders’ yards, at this point divides two neighbourhoods of different aspects. On the south is Hoxton, a region of malodorous market streets, of factories, timber yards, grimy warehouses, of alleys swarming with small trades and crafts, of filthy courts and passages leading into pestilential gloom; everywhere toil in its most degrading forms; the thoroughfares thundering with high-laden waggons, the pavements trodden by working folk of the coarsest type, the corners and lurking-holes showing destitution at its ugliest. Walking northwards, the explorer finds himself in freer air, amid broader ways, in a district of dwelling-houses only; the roads seem abandoned to milkmen, cat’s-meat vendors, and costermongers. Here will be found streets in which every window has its card advertising lodgings: others claim a higher respectability, the houses retreating behind patches of garden-ground, and occasionally showing plastered pillars and a balcony. The change is from undisguised struggle for subsistence to mean and spirit-broken leisure; hither retreat the better-paid of the great slave-army when they are free to eat and sleep. To walk about a neighbourhood such as this is the dreariest exercise to which man can betake himself; the heart is crushed by uniformity of decent squalor; one remembers that each of these dead-faced houses, often each separate blind window, represents a ‘home,’ and the associations of the word whisper blank despair.

      Wilton Square is

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