o longer a merry
comrade to the boy who never left her. Yet he did not wish to leave her.
To her, indeed, he was not a boy, and nobody about the place regarded
him as other than a man. He had been actually and effectively master of
the house for years, just as he was master of his own doings, of his
friendships, recreations, and pursuits. And he had managed all well,
except that he was not thought to be very happy or to get much enjoyment
from his life. That was just an idea he gave of himself, and gave
involuntarily--in spite of taking his fair share in the amusements of
the neighborhood, and holding his own well in its sports and athletics.
But he was considered cold and very reserved. Had Mina Zabriska
remembered this use of "reserve," perhaps she would have employed the
word instead of "wariness." Or perhaps, if his acquaintances had looked
more keenly, they would have come over to Mina's side and found her term
the more accurate. She spoke from a fresher and sharper impression of
him.

His childhood at least had been happy, while Lady Tristram was still the
bewilderingly delightful companion who had got into so much hot water
and made so many people eager to get in after her. Joy lasted with her
as long as health did, and her health began to fail only when her son
approached fifteen. Another thing happened about then, which formed the
prelude to the most vivid scene in the boy's life. Lady Tristram was not
habitually a religious woman; that temper of mind was too abstract for
her; she moved among emotions and images, and had small dealings with
meditation or spiritual conceptions. But happening to be in a mood that
laid her open to the influence, she heard in London one day a sermon
preached by a young man famous at the time, a great searcher of
fashionable hearts. She drove straight from the church (it was a Friday
morning) to Paddington and took the first train home. Harry was
there--back from school for his holiday--and she found him in the
smoking-room, weighing a fish which he had caught in the pool that the
Blent forms above the weir. There and then she fell on her knees on the
floor and poured forth to him the story of that Odyssey of hers which
had shocked London society and is touched upon in Mr Cholderton's
Journal. He listened amazed, embarrassed, puzzled up to a point; a boy's
normal awkwardness was raised to its highest pitch; he did not want to
hear his mother call herself a wicked woman; and anyhow i