yes for the
first time--tears in which the woman who had deceived him had no share.
His heart had gone back to his dead mother. "If she had been alive," he
thought, "I might have trusted _her_, and she would have comforted me."
It was useless to dwell on it; he dashed away the tears, and turned his
thoughts, with the heart-sick resignation that we all know, to living
and present things.

He wrote a line to Mr. Bashwood, briefly informing the deputy steward
that his absence from Thorpe Ambrose was likely to be prolonged for some
little time, and that any further instructions which might be necessary,
under those circumstances, would reach him through Mr. Pedgift the
elder. This done, and the letters sent to the post, his thoughts were
forced back once more on himself. Again the blank future waited before
him to be filled up; and again his heart shrank from it to the refuge of
the past.

This time other images than the image of his mother filled his mind. The
one all-absorbing interest of his earlier days stirred living and eager
in him again. He thought of the sea; he thought of his yacht lying idle
in the fishing harbor at his west-country home. The old longing got
possession of him to hear the wash of the waves; to see the filling of
the sails; to feel the vessel that his own hands had helped to build
bounding under him once more. He rose in his impetuous way to call for
the time-table, and to start for Somersetshire by the first train, when
the dread of the questions which Mr. Brock might ask, the suspicion of
the change which Mr. Brock might see in him, drew him back to his chair.
"I'll write," he thought, "to have the yacht rigged and refitted, and
I'll wait to go to Somersetshire myself till Midwinter can go with me."
He sighed as his memory reverted to his absent friend. Never had he felt
the void made in his life by Midwinter's departure so painfully as he
felt it now, in the dreariest of all social solitudes--the solitude of a
stranger in London, left by himself at a hotel.

Before long, Pedgift Junior looked in, with an apology for his
intrusion. Allan felt too lonely and too friendless not to welcome his
companion's re-appearance gratefully. "I'm not going back to Thorpe
Ambrose," he said; "I'm going to stay a little while in London. I
hope you will be able to stay with me?" To do him justice, Pedgift was
touched by the solitary position in which the owner of the great Thorpe
Ambrose estate now appeared bef