"I should have thought that your brother would have had more spirit than to sit down and whine over a woman in that way," said her ladyship, sharply; "it is really contemptible."
"But if he is ill in body as well as in mind, poor fellow?"
"Pooh! fiddlesticks! I am quite sure, if Helen jilted you, you would bear it a great deal better—losing the money and all—than he does."
Maurice smiled.
"That is very possible; but a man can't help his disposition, and John has been utterly shattered by it."
"Well, I am sorry for him, of course; but I confess that I don't see that anybody can do anything for him."
And then Maurice was silent for a minute. God only knew what passed through his soul at that minute—what agonies of self-renunciation, what martyrdom of all that makes life pleasant and dear to a man! It is certain his mother did not know it.
"I think," he said, after a minute, and only a slight harshness in his voice marked the internal struggle that the words were to cost him—"I think, mother, you might do a great deal for him. Miss Nevill is in town. Could you not see her?"
"I see her! What on earth for?"
"If you were to tell her how ill John is, how desperately he feels her treatment of him—how——"