When the husband advanced with his wife, the youth took the outstretched hand and in a cold tone, his lips still uttering what his heart did not inspire, he said, as if welcoming a stranger: "I am happy to make your acquaintance, madam."
He soon perceived that he had gone rather too far. He had acted on the impulse of the moment. In fact, he had dug the abyss that was ever to lie between his step-mother and himself.
"After all," he said to himself, "it is better to obey one's heart." He did not even stop to think that there were two powers at work.
He was more to be pitied than blamed. He had loved his mother dearly, and now that she was dead, he revered her memory.
He now perceived the influence of a good home. It had rescued him from a life of idleness and perhaps of vice. The genial atmosphere of their little parlour had kept him at home even more than his books, which he, however, cared a good deal for.
But now, it was all finished. This place would no more be home. It was a house, a comfortable dwelling place; that was all. He would now have to live amongst unattractive and semi-hostile surroundings.
Through his own fault, he would suffer. One thought however strengthened him. Thousands of others had suffered for conscience's sake. He remembered how his blood rushed to his face, when he read about the tortures of the martyrs of religion; or the driving into exile of the patriots of Poland.
Strengthened with these thoughts, he rose, more determined than ever to do right; to champion the good; to work; to study; to strive to acquire wisdom.