"Very well," Mrs. Errington replied.
She really began to look ill, but Horace was too much preoccupied with his own feelings to notice it. There was something abominable to him in his mother sitting calmly down to rest in the very place occupied a few hours ago by the wretched creature who had, so Horace believed, been driven to death by her refusal of charity. He felt sick with horror in that neighbourhood, and he moved away, and stood staring across the Serpentine. Presently Mrs. Errington called to him in a faint voice——
"Horace, come and give me your hand."
He turned, noticed her extreme pallor, and ran up.
"What's the row? Are you ill, Mater?"
"No. Help me up." He put out his hand. She got up slowly.
"We'll go home," he said. "You look awfully seedy."
"No; let us walk on."
In spite of his remonstrances she insisted on walking up and down at the edge of the Serpentine for quite an hour. She appeared to be on the look-out for somebody. Over and over again they passed the spot where the beggar had drowned himself. Their feet trod over the ground on which his dead body had been laid. Each time they reached it Horace felt himself grow cold. Death is so terrible to the young. At last Mrs. Errington stopped.
"I can't walk much more," she said.