“Then before you were ten years of age?”
“I lived at home, of course.”
“And where was that?”
“You will excuse me, Inez, from answering that question. I have reasons for doing so. Let me say that I stayed at home for the first ten years of my existence, and was as bad a boy as can be imagined. I fell into the worst kind of habits, and it was through the two men––Redvignez and Brazzier––whom I’ve heard you speak of, that I was persuaded to go to sea with them, when I ought to have been at home with my father.”
“Is your mother living, Mr. Sanders?”
The youth turned his head away, so she could not 216 see his face, and when he moved it back and spoke again there was a tear on his cheek, and he replied, in a voice of sadness:
“My mother is in heaven, where her son will never be.”
Inez was inexpressibly shocked.
“Why, Mr. Sanders, what do you mean by that?”
“A better woman than she never lived, nor a worse boy than I. You can’t understand, Inez. You are too young and too good yourself to realize what a wretch I was. I deliberately ran away from home seven years ago, and have never been within a thousand miles of it since, and I never expected to do so, until within the last day or so; somehow or other, I’ve fallen to thinking more than before.”