"Mother," he cried, "there's enough of this between you and me. I want you not for Underwood, but for everything. Why should you care for a cad like me? but you do——"
"Care for you? Oh, my boy!"
"I know; there you sit that have travelled night and day because I held up my finger: and would give me your life if you could, and bear everything, and never change and never tire. Why, in the name of God, why?" he cried with an outburst. "What have I ever done that you should do this for me? You are worth a score of such as I am, and yet you make yourself a slave—"
"Oh, Walter, my dear! how vain are all these words. I am your mother," she said.
Presently he drew a chair close to her and sat down beside her.
"All these things have been put before me," he said, "to drive me to despair. I have tried to say that it was this vile lordship, and the burden of the family, that has made me bad, mother. But you know better than that," he said, looking up at her with a stormy gleam in his face that could not be called a smile, "and so do I."
"Walter, God forbid that I should ever have thought you bad. You have been led astray."
"To do—what I wanted to do," he said with another smile, "that is what is called leading astray between a man and those who stand between him and the devil; but I have talked with one who thinks of no such punctilios. Mother, vice deserves damnation; isn't that your creed?"
"Walter!"
"Oh, I know; but listen to me. If that were so, would a woman like you stand by the wretch still?"