“And, indeed,” said Leonard, concluding a longer but a simpler narrative than is here told—“indeed, there is some chance that I may obtain at once a sum that will leave me free for the rest of my life to select my own subjects and write without care for renumeration. This is what I call the true (and, perhaps, alas! the rare) independence of him who devotes himself to letters. Norreys, having seen my boyish plan for the improvement of certain machinery in the steam-engine, insisted on my giving much time to mechanics. The study that once pleased me so greatly, now seemed dull; but I went into it with good heart; and the result is, that I have improved so far on my original idea, that my scheme has met the approbation of one of our most scientific engineers; and I am assured that the patent for it will be purchased of me upon terms which I am ashamed to name to you, so disproportioned do they seem to the value of so simple a discovery. Meanwhile, I am already rich enough to have realized the two dreams of my heart—to make a home in the cottage where I had last seen you and Helen—I mean Miss Digby; and to invite to that home her who had sheltered my infancy.”
“Your mother, where is she? Let me see her.”
Leonard ran out to call the widow, but, to his surprise and vexation, learned that she had quitted the house before L'Estrange arrived.
He came back perplexed how to explain what seemed ungracious and ungrateful, and spoke with hesitating lip and flushed cheek of the widow's natural timidity and sense of her own homely station. “And so overpowered is she,” added Leonard, “by the recollection of all that we owe to you, that she never hears your name without agitation or tears, and trembled like a leaf at the thought of seeing you.”
“Ha!” said Harley, with visible emotion. “Is it so?” And he bent down, shading his face with his hand. “And,” he renewed, after a pause, but not looking up—“and you ascribe this fear of seeing me, this agitation at my name, solely to an exaggerated sense of—of the circumstances attending my acquaintance with yourself?”
“And, perhaps, to a sort of shame that the mother of one you have made her proud of is but a peasant.”
“That is all,” said Harley, earnestly, now looking up and fixing eyes in which stood tears, upon Leonard's ingenuous brow.
“Oh, my dear lord, what else can it be? Do not judge her harshly.”
L'Estrange rose abruptly, pressed Leonard's hand, muttered something not audible, and then drawing his young friend's arm in his, led him into the garden, and turned the conversation back to its former topics.
Leonard's heart yearned to ask after Helen, and yet something withheld him from doing so, till, seeing Harley did not volunteer to speak of her, he could not resist his impulse. “And Helen—Miss Digby—is she much changed?”