"And now, my dear boy, how shall I end this letter? What shall I say? What can I say that I have not said again and again, and with sadly little effect, as you will not deny! But I forbear, and I hope. A feeling that I cannot define, an instinct, tells me that a crisis in my life is near. And what can such a crisis in my life mean, except in reference to you, my beloved and only child? In your hands lies all the future, all the disposition of the 'few and evil' years which remain to me. How are you going to deal with them? Is the love, which can never fail or falter, to be tried and wounded to the end, George, or is it to see any fruition in this world? Think over this question, my son, and let me read in your face, when I see you, that the answer is to be one of hope. You are much changed, George, the bitterness is succeeding the honey in your mouth; you are 'giving your strength for that which is not meat, and your labour for that which satisfieth not,' and though all the lookers-on at such a career as yours can see, and always do see, its emptiness and insufficiency plainly, what does their wisdom, their experience, avail? But if wisdom and experience come to yourself, that makes all the difference. If you have learned, and I venture to hope you have, that the delusive light is but a 'Will of the Wisp,' you will cease to pursue it. Come to me, then, my boy. I have kept my word to you, at such a cost as you can hardly estimate, seeing that no heart can impart all its bitterness to another; will you keep yours to me?
"C. L. Carruthers."
"What does she mean? What can she mean?" George Dallas asked himself this question again and again, as he stood looking at the letter in his hand. "What has she done? A mean and deliberate deceit--some dishonourable transaction? My mother could not do anything deserving to be so called. It is impossible. Even if she could contemplate such a thing, she would not know how to set about it. God bless her!"
He sat down by the table, drew the dingy Britannia-metal teapot over beside his cup, and sat with his hand resting idly upon the distorted handle, still thinking less of the relief which the letter had brought him, than of the mysterious terms in which it was couched.
"She can't have got it out of Carruthers without his knowing anything about it?" he mused. "No; besides, getting it from him at all, is precisely the thing she told me she could not do. Well, I must wait to know; but how good of her to get it! Who's the fellow who says a man can have only one mother? By Jove, how right he is!"
Then George ate his breakfast hastily, and, putting the precious letter in his breast-pocket, went to Routh's lodgings.
"I dare say they're not up," he thought, as he knocked at the door, and patiently waited the lingering approach of the slipshod servant. "Routh was as late as I was last night, and I know she always sits up for him."
He was right; they had not yet appeared in the sitting-room, and he had time for a good deal of walking up and down, and much cogitation over his mother's letter, before Harriet appeared. She was looking anxious, Dallas thought, so he stepped forward even more eagerly than usual, and told her in hurried tones of gladness that the post had brought him good news, and that his mother was going to give him the money.
"I don't know how she has contrived to get it, Mrs. Routh," he said.
"Does she not tell you, then?" asked Harriet, as she eyed with some curiosity the letter which Dallas had taken out of his pocket, and which he turned about in his hand, as he stood talking to her. As she spoke, he replaced the letter in his pocket, and sat down.