"Wayward, perhaps, but young. Oh Lady Railton, do not revenge too harshly upon a spoiled child of nature and the world, the sins of the world's committing. Mrs Sinclair has a warm and affectionate heart; she is devoted to her husband. Your ladyship's friendship and advice would at once render her all you could hope to find in the wife of your son. Permit me to say that the absence of your countenance has alone been sufficient to"——
"Alas! you urge in vain. I dare not see them!"
"It is a hard saying, madam," I rejoined: "may you not live to repent it!"
Lady Railton rose from her seat, came from behind the screen, and paced her small chamber with perturbation. She suddenly stopped before a cabinet—a drawer of which she unlocked, and produced from it a pocket-book.
"Take this, Mr Wilson," she said in a hurried and faltering voice. "I dare not see him—must not correspond with him. I am his mother, and I feel bitterly, most bitterly for him. But I am Lord Railton's wife, and I know my duty. He has disgraced us—irreparably, irrecoverably. You cannot understand how deep the stain is which our name has suffered; you cannot calculate the wrong inflicted on my husband. Reconciliation is hopeless!"
"And this pocket-book, madam?" I coldly asked.
"Contains an order on my banker for three thousand pounds—all that I have been able to hoard up for my unhappy boy since he deserted us. The sum, I know, is trifling, compared with his exigencies. But what can I do? His own conduct has rendered me helpless."
Poor Lady Railton, to do her justice, suffered much from the struggle between maternal feeling and her mistaken sense of duty. Her eyes filled with tears again, and she sat before me sobbing bitterly.
"Let me entreat your ladyship," I exclaimed with animation, "to make one effort for the redemption of the children whom you may lose for ever by the stern course you now adopt. Your influence with Lord Railton is naturally and deservedly very great. I cannot bring myself to believe that he will be insensible to your appeals, if you will but urge them with the earnestness and tenderness which so well become you. I an satisfied that the difficulties of Mr Sinclair would cease at once, and his happiness as well as your own be secured, if he could find parents and advisers in those to whom he has a right to look for advice and aid. Whatever his extravagance may have been, whatever his youthful follies, I do implore your ladyship to bear in mind, that not he alone is answerable for them, but they also in part who deserted him in the hour of his greatest need. You may save him now—when I next meet your ladyship, the time will have passed away."
"Spare me this anguish," said her ladyship with assumed calmness. "I repeat—it is impossible. The hour may come when it shall be permitted me to satisfy the promptings of my heart. Till that hour arrives, it is but torture to be reminded of my inability and weakness."