-that 's what you want to prove!"
he cried. "That 's consoling for me, who have lost her! You 're always
right, I say; but, dear friend, in mercy, be wrong for once!"

"Oh yes, Mr. Mallet, be merciful!" said Mrs. Hudson, in a tone which,
for all its gentleness, made Rowland stare. The poor fellow's stare
covered a great deal of concentrated wonder and apprehension--a
presentiment of what a small, sweet, feeble, elderly lady might be
capable of, in the way of suddenly generated animosity. There was no
space in Mrs. Hudson's tiny maternal mind for complications of feeling,
and one emotion existed only by turning another over flat and perching
on top of it. She was evidently not following Roderick at all in his
dusky aberrations. Sitting without, in dismay, she only saw that all was
darkness and trouble, and as Roderick's glory had now quite outstripped
her powers of imagination and urged him beyond her jurisdiction, so that
he had become a thing too precious and sacred for blame, she found it
infinitely comfortable to lay the burden of their common affliction upon
Rowland's broad shoulders. Had he not promised to make them all rich and
happy? And this was the end of it! Rowland felt as if his trials were,
in a sense, only beginning. "Had n't you better forget all this, my
dear?" Mrs. Hudson said. "Had n't you better just quietly attend to your
work?"

"Work, madame?" cried Roderick. "My work 's over. I can't work--I have
n't worked all winter. If I were fit for anything, this sentimental
collapse would have been just the thing to cure me of my apathy and
break the spell of my idleness. But there 's a perfect vacuum here!" And
he tapped his forehead. "It 's bigger than ever; it grows bigger every
hour!"

"I 'm sure you have made a beautiful likeness of your poor little
mother," said Mrs. Hudson, coaxingly.

"I had done nothing before, and I have done nothing since! I quarreled
with an excellent man, the other day, from mere exasperation of my
nerves, and threw away five thousand dollars!"

"Threw away--five thousand dollars!" Roderick had been wandering among
formidable abstractions and allusions too dark to penetrate. But here
was a concrete fact, lucidly stated, and poor Mrs. Hudson, for a moment,
looked it in the face. She repeated her son's words a third time with a
gasping murmur, and then, suddenly, she burst into tears. Roderick
went to her, sat down beside her, put his arm round her, fixed his eyes
coldly on