t was a long
while ago, and he did not understand it all very well. The woman lifted
her eyes and looked at him; she was caught by the luxury of confession,
of humiliation, of offering her back to the whip. She told him he was
not her heir--that he would not be Tristram of Blent. For a moment she
laid her head on the floor at his feet. She heard no sound from him, and
presently looked up at him again. His embarrassment had gone; he was
standing rigidly still, his eyes gazing out toward the river, his
forehead wrinkled in a frown. He was thinking. She went on kneeling
there, saying no more, staring at her son. It was characteristic of her
that she did not risk diminishing the effectiveness of the scene, or the
tragedy of her avowal, by explaining the perverse accident owing to
which her fault had entailed such an aggravation of evil. Harry learnt
that later.

Later--and in a most different sort of interview. From the first Harry
had no thought of surrender; his mother had none either as soon as she
had forgotten her preacher. The discussion was resumed after a week
(Lady Tristram had spent the interval in bed) on a business footing. She
found in him the same carelessness of the world and its obligations that
there was in herself, but found it carried to the point of scorn and
allied to a tenacity of purpose and a keenness of vision which she had
never owned. Not a reproach escaped him--less, she thought, from
generosity than because he chose to concentrate his mind on something
useful. It was no use lamenting the past; it might be possible to undo
it for all practical purposes. The affair was never again referred to
between them except as a factor recommending or dictating some course of
action; its private side--its revelation of her and its effect (or what
might have been its effect) on his feelings toward her--was never spoken
of. Lady Tristram thought that the effect was nothing, and the
revelation not very surprising to her son. He accepted without argument
her own view--that she had done nothing very strange but had fallen on
very bad luck. But he told her at once that he was not going back to
Harrow. She understood; she agreed to be watched, she abdicated her
rule, she put everything in his hands and obeyed him.

Thus, at fifteen, Harry Tristram took up his burden and seemed to take
up his manhood too. He never wavered; he always assumed that right and
justice were on his side, that he was not merely justified in