was useless trying to stop her, or to give her 1 rest. Rapidly the sweet voice, so low and so clear in its enunciation, poured forth its words, as if the invalid knew that she was making her last shrift in this troublous world.
“ But our boy, when he came back to me, seemed to have come with an altered nature,” she continued. “ He grew up out’ wardly all that a fond mother could wish; I but inwardly cold, reserved, and clever—but I with that cleverness which regards only self.
He worked at his tasks steadily and with industry—accumulated knowledge, but it was for himself. For years I did not let him know his history. He believed me to be a widow; and he chafed and fretted against 1 poverty, as if our quiet life—undistinguished, but with few trials in it—were a bitter trouble to him.
“ He was ambitious, and chose his own career. He was determined to study the I law; for he saw that in that there lay more I advancement in the world than in anything else, and that he might thereby take advan tage of the weakness and the follies of mankind. He said so, calmly and with purpose, to me. I hoped that, as he grew up, some strong passion of love might lay hold of him, and purify his nature; but I found that youth passed away without this relief. He never told me anything—was coldly polite to me, but never confided in me. The love which I had fondly dreamed he would, from his father's nature, shower upon me, was withheld. He was impassive. Many a mother would, perhaps, have held him to be without fault—he was so constant at his studies, so determined to win his way. Alas! the very faultlessness which others saw in him was to my fond heart his greatest fault itself.
“At last, in an evil hour, some six months ago, thinking to move him, I told him all. I was ill then, and I fancied that I might not live; and I thought that I should not like to die without his knowing his mother's story and his father's name.
“ The revelation did not seem either to distress him or to surprise him. He heard me coolly to the end—telling him, with broken voice, the sad story of my love and my punishment”
Even here the poor dying creature said no harsh word. She might have told her cruel wrongs—and so the little group that heard her thought. Her reticence made the story more pathetic; and Lord Chesterton felt in his heart her great charity to be a blow and a reproof.
“ He listened calmly, but said no word of sympathy; while he complained bitterly of the wrong done to him. Oh, how every word of his wounded me! My punishment was indeed bitter: it was more than I could bear.
“ Some time after that he obtained some of the letters which you had sent me—those letters which were a proof of what I had said, and which, while they revealed to him his birth, told him also of the love you bore him. He complained coldly, but in strong terms, that I had thwarted your schemes. He never uttered what my heart longed for —the generous approval of a son of a sorely tempted mother who had refrained from crime.”
The poor lady again paused, and the nurse refreshed her by putting some wine and water to her lips.
During the short silence that ensued, we will go back to Edgar Wade, whom we left standing at the door of Mr. George Horton's house in Wimpole-street.
Disturbed by the persistence of Winnifred in her plan, the barrister found that resistance was useless, and that he could not prevent the meeting which he dreaded.
And, after all—thus he reasoned to himself—why should he dread it? Mrs. Wade was too far gone for her to recover, and to make uncomfortable explanations. The chain of evidence collected by Old Daylight was too strong, even at its weakest link, to break; and if it did, and Lord Wimpole were not thus disposed of, his claim to the position which he so coveted, and which would purchase or ensure him the only being he loved, had been admitted by both father and son.
It would be useless for him to oppose this meeting. It would be better for him to allow it to take place. He felt his dread only a weakness; and he was so far committed to the desperate game he had hitherto played with such skill and success, that he felt it was better to leave something to chance. Had not Dr. Richards, his old scientific friend—with whom he had studied natural science, and who looked upon the world as a chess-board, and human beings as the pieces moved by the hands of science, and an intelligible but unmastered law—as-
