The mother withdrew the hand which, emboldened by her young son's unwonted show of confiding consideration, had ventured to begin to part the dark matted locks from his heated brow. Nor was this done from dismay at the chief purport of this desperate intelligence, but from the cold pang with which these concluding words struck upon her ear: "Marryott won't—will you?"
It had not then been the impulse of his filial heart, as for a few brief minutes she had gladly hoped, to fly to his mother in his distress. He had gone to another first, and only come to her as a last resource—as often when a boy had been the case, when Marryott, for fear of his father's displeasure at the expense, had refused him some indulgence—some of those "good things" we have heard the man Eugene so feelingly deplore, and with which the mother had supplied him from her own too circumscribed resources.
Had not the present emergency been out of the question to her limited powers, how willingly would she in the same manner have relieved her son of his pressing anxiety.
As it was, the momentary pang of bitterness allayed, without giving way to any irritating manifestation of her feelings, with regard to his astounding communication, she only expressed her sorrow at his misfortune and perplexity; and refused not to take upon herself the office he demanded of her.
"Alas, Eugene! you know the extent of the influence I possess," she sadly observed. "I can but break to your father what you have related, and trust to his general indulgence towards you, rather than to any regard he may be inclined to pay to entreaties of mine in your behalf."
"Exactly; that is all I want, mother; tell him that I will work hard at that d—d bank for the next year—that I will make it up to him in some way—anything in the world; but if he does not let me have it, I must blow my brains out—that's all."
And the mother, sadly sighing over the ruinous course—ruinous as regarded his soul's welfare—in which her son had so early embarked—and she, without any power to influence or to restrain—left the room.
Mrs. Trevor entered the library with no willing step. She knew well how she should find her husband occupied, and the disagreeable nature of her mission was less repugnant to her feelings than the pain which would most probably be in store for her in her other son's behalf.
And here indeed she did find her Eustace undergoing a more torturing mental ordeal than that of the physical chastisement to which she had on a former occasion seen him exposed in that same apartment; his noble, generous spirit goaded almost beyond the power of endurance, as compelled to sit there before his father, and submit to the most close, exact, and grinding examination of every detail and minutiæ of his last year's expenses, a process accompanied, as was every item of the amount, with the most bitter and angry comments on his so-called profligacy and extravagance—the galling and degrading nature of which ordeal every young man, blameless and well-principled as he may be, will be able fully to appreciate.
The mother cast an involuntary glance of tender concern upon the victim, and then approached her husband.