all the temptations which I knew, by report,
must necessarily beset him.

Derwent's first letters were very satisfactory.
Breathing love for his old home,
and saintly abhorrence at all that he saw
around him, they did not bear a trace of
any new influence; and I was reassured if,
by chance, I had ever unconsciously doubted.
But, by degrees, the tone of his letters changed.
He spoke of strange men as his friends, to
me, who had so often urged on him the necessity
of keeping aloof from all intimacy
whatsoever with his fellow-collegians. For had I
brought him up in seclusion from boys, to see
him adopt the habits, perhaps the vices of
men? The very name applied to strangers
made me predict all sorts of unknown
dangers. Soon, also, he began to use strange
words whereof I knew not the meaning; to
talk of parties of pleasure, which seemed
to me sadly at variance with the object
of his studies; to speak of subjects that froze
the blood in my veins—and then, what was
hardest to bear of all, he more than once
reproached me with the carefulness of my
education, and "bewailed a pampered
boyhood, which left him nothing but an ignorant
and ridiculous manhood." He soon grew to
speaking of himself in the most humiliating
and degrading terms. I felt that it was not
modesty, but wounded pride, which made
him use these bitter words, and they angered
me even more than they pained; for the
sting of each was meant for me; yet I had
been a faithful and devoted mother.

Thus a coolness between us grew and
spread, till soon I felt that I had two sons:
one who had died in boyhood, and one who
had come suddenly before me as an alien—
but still my child. It was a fearful feeling,—
for a moral death is more fearful to witness
than any physical death.

Vacation time came. How I had looked
forward to this time! I had turned back to
school-girl days, and counted the hours
which lay between me and the moment when
I should hold my son to my heart. For
the consciousness that he was drifting from
me made me feel much more tenderly, more
fondly for him, than I had ever done before;
and I think if he had come to me then, I
could have redeemed him by my very love.
But, a week before the appointed day, I
received a letter from him, telling me that he
had engaged to go with a reading party
into Wales, and that he could not
consequently see me until the next vacation, which
would be at Christmas. It was now mid-
summer. Wounded and hurt, I wrote back
a cold reply, simply consenting to the
arrangement, but not expressing a word
of sorrow at my own disappointment;
knowing, alas, that the omission would not
be remarked. Nor was it. Derwent's answer
was full of pleasurable anticipations of his
summer with his dear friends, enthusiastic
praises of his party, disrespectful satire on
his home at Haredale,and on men tied to
their mothers' apron strings; which last
observation he qualified by adding praises
on my common sense in not requiring
such milksop devotion. He ended with his
usual expressions of regret at his early
education, and of self-contempt for his want
of manly acquirements. A want, however,
lessening daily, he said, under the able
tuition of his friends.

What followed until Christmas was merely
a deepening of those shades; till, at last, the
silent misunderstanding between us grew
out into a broad, black line—an impassable
barrier, which neither of us sought to
conceal.

Derwent had been absent a year and a-half
when I saw him again. And, had it been a
spectre which had usurped the name of my
child, I should not have recognised him less
readily than I did now in the vulgar roué who
returned to me in place of that pure saint I had
sent out like my dove from my ark. The
long golden hair which had floated on each
side of his face low to his shoulders, was cut
short, darkened by oils, and parted at the side.
The face which had borne no deeper traces
than what a child's simple sensations might
have marked, was now blotched by dissipation.
The very features were different. The eyes
were smaller, and the blue less blue; the lips
were hard and swollen; the nose thicker; the
jaw more square; while his figure retained
nothing of the slightness nor of the grace
which had made him once so beautiful. His
hands were covered with purple scars; his
shoulders were broad; his neck coarse and
muscular. He was not the Derwent I had
sent to the great university. As changed in
outward seeming, so was he in manner and
in thought. Coarse jests with the servants
and the low people of the village; incessant
smoking; spirits, beer, drunk at all hours,
from the early morning to late at night; a
lounging, restless, dissipated habit, seemingly
unable to concentrate thought or energy
on anything but the merest sensuality;
perpetual satire—satire on the noblest, satire
on the highest subjects; a conversation blackened
with the vilest oaths: this was the
Derwent whom the alma mater sent back to
his own mother; this the reaction of my
careful schooling—the hideous mark to which,
the rebound had fallen.

The six weeks were only half over, when
Derwent, yawning more noisily than usual,
came lounging through the hall to the
drawing-room.

"Mother," he said, plunging himself at
full length upon the sofa, "Haredale is awfully
slow! By Jove! it uses a man up twice as
fast as the fastest college life. I am positively
worn out with the monotony of these three
weeks. You seem all asleep in this precious
old toad-hole. I can't stand it any more,
that's a fact. In plain English, mother, I
must go."