When Mrs. Weston returned, after a month's absence, she could not but observe an alteration in George. Although he never told her of his attendance at the lectures on Sunday, or the arguments he had had with friends who held infidel opinions, she soon perceived that George's feelings were undergoing a rapid and dangerous change. Those subjects on which he was once in the habit of conversing with her, he now carefully shunned. He was affectionate and kind to his mother still, and loved her with all his old intense love, but that ingenuous confidence which he had always reposed in her was gone. Things that were dear to him now he could not discuss with her; instead of telling her how he spent his time, and what were his amusements, he avoided any mention of them. The deception which he first practised on that night when he yielded to Ashton's persuasion, was now a system. He reasoned the matter over with himself: there could be no good in telling her; their opinions were different; he would take his course, independently of hers.
Uncle Brunton noticed the change; for to those who saw him seldom the change was sudden. But to George, every day there seemed an epoch, and he was unconscious of the rapidity with which old associations and ideas cherished from childhood were thrown down and trampled upon by the new feelings which had taken possession of him.
"George," said Mr. Brunton to him one day, "I am growing uneasy about you. I feel that I am not the same to you, nor you to me, we used to be, only a few months back. I cannot tell the reason—cannot tell when the difference commenced or how—but for some months past—ever since your mother's visit to the country—there has been a want of that old confidential, affectionate intercourse between us there used to be."
"I was younger then," said George, "and the freshness of youthful feeling and attachment may die away as we advance in years; but I am not aware that I have ever given you occasion to say I do not love you sincerely still, uncle. Your kindness to me never can, and never will be forgotten."
"Well, George, I cannot explain what I mean. I have a kind of feeling about you that something is wrong which I cannot put into words. I fancy that if I offer you a word of counsel, you do not receive it as you once did; if I talk seriously with you, it does not make the same impression, or touch the spring of the same feelings. You do not talk to me with the old frankness and candour which made my heart leap, when I thanked God I had got some one in the world to love, and who loved me. But perhaps I wrong you, and expect too much from you."
"No, not that, uncle. Frankness, candour, and love are due to you, and while I have them they shall always be yours; and to prove it, I will tell what I have never told any one before, what I have hardly spoken to my own heart. I think of the George Weston you brought away from Dr. Seaward's, who stood with you beside a father's deathbed, and who, eighteen months ago, went into Mr. Compton's office; then I think of George Weston of to-day, and I feel amazed at the change a few years has made. I have asked myself a hundred times, am I really the same? Oh, uncle! you do not know what I would give to be that boy again—to live once more in that old world of sunshine."
Tears started to George's eyes as he spoke, and Mr. Brunton could only squeeze his hand, and say, "God bless you, my boy! God bless you!"
A few days later Mr. Brunton and Mrs. Weston were one whole evening together talking about George. Both hearts were heavy, but Mr. Brunton's was the lighter of the two.
"I tell you what I think will be the very best thing for you and for George," he said, "It is now the early spring, and the country is beginning to look fresh and green. Leave this house and take one in the country. I think George can easily be made to accede to this proposition—he was always fond of country life and recreations. He can have a season ticket on the railway, and come down every night. This will wean him from his associates, and induce him to keep earlier hours, and give us, too, a better opportunity to lure him back to his old habits of life."
The arrangements were made. Mrs. Weston, with that loving self-denial which only a mother can exercise, gave up the house, and her circle of friends, and took up her residence in the country, about twenty miles from London. George was pleased with the change, and acquiesced in all the plans which were made.