Mr. Ashburn had mumbled his good-byes with a touch of emotion and even shame in his manner as he shuffled away to his office. 'I don't want you to feel we've cast you off,' he had said nervously. 'Your mother says rather more than she exactly feels at times; but it's better for you to go, my boy, better for all parties concerned. Only, if you find yourself in—in any difficulties, come back to us, or—that is,' he amended, 'write, or come to me at the office, that will be better, perhaps.'
But Mrs. Ashburn's last words were, 'Good-bye, Mark. I never thought to part with a son of mine in anger; we may never meet again, but you may live to be sorry for the grief you have caused your mother, when you stand one day over her grave.'
This would have been more impressive if Mrs. Ashburn had not been so much addicted to indulging in such doleful predictions on less adequate occasions that she had discounted much of the effect that properly belonged to them; even as it was, however, they cut Mark for the moment; he half offered to embrace his mother, but she made no response, and after waiting for a while, and finding that she made no sign, he went out with a slight shrug of expostulation.
When he had left the room, she half rose as if to follow, but stopped half way irresolute, while the cab which he had engaged to take himself and his luggage to his new quarters drove off, and then she went upstairs and shut herself in her bedroom for half-an-hour, and the maid, who was 'doing the rooms' hard by, reported afterwards to the cook that she had 'heard missus takin' on awful in there, a-sobbin', and groanin', and prayin' she was, all together like, it quite upset her to 'ear it.'
There were no traces of emotion on her face, however, when she came down again, and only an additional shade of grimness in her voice and manner to tell of the half-hour's agony in which her mother's heart had warred against her pride and her principles.
CHAPTER XII.
LAUNCHED.
MARK had now cut himself adrift and established himself in rooms in one of the small streets about Connaught Square, where he waited for his schemes to accomplish themselves. He still retained his mastership at St. Peter's, although he hoped to be able to throw that up as soon as he could do so with any prudence, and the time that was not occupied by his school duties he devoted to the perfecting of his friend's work. It was hardly a labour of love, and he came to it with an ever-increasing weariness; all the tedious toiling through piles of proofs and revised proofs, the weeding out of ingenious perversions which seemed to possess a hydra-like power of multiplication after the first eradication, began to inspire him with an infinite loathing of this book which was his and not his own.
It had never interested him; he had never been able to feel the slightest admiration for any part of it, and at times he ceased to believe in it altogether, and think that, after all, he had transgressed to no purpose, and that his own book would have been a stronger staff to lean upon than this reed he had borrowed. But he had to go on with it now, and trust to his good-luck for the consequences; but still there were moments when he trembled at what he had done, and could not bear to be so constantly reminded of it.