"At your pleasure, Derwent," I said,
coldly, not even raising my eyes.

"Well, now, that's prime! You are a fine
little mother, anyhow!" he said, laughing;
but I fancied that his voice had a slight
accent of disappointment in it. "You are
not like most mothers of only sons," he added,
with emphasis.

"Your visit, Derwent," I went on to say,
"has not been of such satisfaction to me as to
cause me much regret at its termination.
Your habits, your ways of life, your tone of
thought, and style of conversation are all so
foreign to my own ideas of a gentleman—of
what my son should be—that I confess to
more sorrow than pleasure in your presence.
Once you were my pride; now—"

"Upon my soul that's cool! " shouted
Derwent, interrupting me with his college
laugh and a college oath. "Still," he added,
after a pause, "it leaves me freer than I
might have felt if you had taken to the
pathetics. For I don't know how much
resolution might have been melted, like Cleopatra's
pearls, in your tears."

"I don't think you ever saw my tears," I
answered, very coldly.

"No; that's true, mother. Your heart
might be of iron, for any water-founts leading
from it to your eyes," said Derwent.

"And the first, assuredly, shall not be on
account of your absence, when that absence
is desired and planned by your own will."

"Then we part good friends, mother?" he
said, lounging up from the sofa, and taking a
cigar from his case.

"Quite as good friends, Derwent, as we can
ever hope to be now," I replied with a voice
sterner and steadier than usual; because I
had more emotion to conceal.

I felt him look at me fixedly, but I did not
raise my eyes; and, in a few moments, he
strode out of the room, whistling a vulgar air.

That evening he left Haredale while I was
absent for an hour; and, when next vacation-
time came, I myself volunteered his spending
it away from home.

Soon, our letters decreased into brief
quarterlies. Soon, they became nearly half-yearly
communications; and, in due course, degree
time came, without Derwent's attempting a
second sojourn at home. In the meanwhile
my hair had grown grey, and my face, always
pale, paler still and wrinkled. I lost all
enjoyment of life; and, though a woman still
in the prime of middle age, felt and lived
like one on the border of a thorny grave. It
seemed to me that the sun never shone, and
the south wind never blew. It was nothing
but a grey, chill, winter time that I lived
through; a time of spiritual death.

Perhaps I was to blame for all this. Had
I been more demonstrative; had I
condescended to sue, to entreat, to caress, I dare say
I might have softened him somewhat to the
old shape. But I could not do this; the iron
of my nature was too strong and too
intolerant. So I left him to his own way, and
left on his own head the curse or the blessing
of his life.

The examination for degrees came, and
my son was plucked. He could not pass,
even among the lowest of the lowest class.
He wrote, in a careless off-hand manner,
about this new dishonour, saying, that
it did not much signify, as he intended
to become artist, Bedouin, Bohemian,
Sagaburd,—anything rather than a parson; and
that M.A. would look worse than ridiculous
after the name of an historical painter,
or a marker at a billiard-table. I answered
that he had my consent to any course of life
he chose to adopt—a consent wrung from a
shattered pride and ruined hopes—and that
I was too indifferent to his future now to
interfere in any of the details of its disgrace.
But he did not know that this letter, so hard,
and stern, and cold as it seemed, was written
between tears and sobs; and, in the fitful
bursts of such a storm of passionate anguish,
as I never thought could sweep through my
strong and chastened heart.

He went to London; which he said was the
only field for him; and, in a short time, he
told me that he had begun to study art
seriously; but that he feared he should never
make much substantial progress.

Time passed; fading ever into deeper,
duller grey, until all the horizon round my
life became soon black and mourning.

I need scarcely say what disgust my son's
profession caused me. I had always held
the artist-world as something different to
and below ourselves, and should as soon
have expected a child of mine to have turned
mountebank of a strolling company as to
have seen him take up painting as a
profession. No one knew, and none could see or
guess, what I suffered; for I bore myself in
my own manner, and hardened that I might
strengthen myself. But this, coupled with
the disgrace of his college failure, nearly broke
my heart.

One day a telegraphic message came from
Derwent, requiring my instant presence in
London. It was the only communication I
had had from him for above a year; and,
until I read his address in the message, I
did not know where he lived. I hesitated
at the first moment whether I should go
or not; but the remembrance of my old
love, rather than any present affection—
no! that had been lived down in his
disgrace!—determined me. And the evening
saw me on my way to town. I arrived at
about eleven that night, and drove direct to
the obscure street near Fitzroy Square where
Derwent lived: a part of the town I had
never known in my former days, and which
sufficiently shocked me when I saw it. A
dirty, coarse-looking woman opened the door
to me, and, after a long time of insolent
scrutiny, admitted me into a narrow hall, the
close smell of which, and its neglect and filth,