eful predictions on less
adequate occasions that she had discounted much of the effect that
properly belonged to them; even as it was, however, they cut Mark for
the moment; he half offered to embrace his mother, but she made no
response, and after waiting for a while, and finding that she made no
sign, he went out with a slight shrug of expostulation.

When he had left the room, she half rose as if to follow, but stopped
half way irresolute, while the cab which he had engaged to take
himself and his luggage to his new quarters drove off, and then she
went upstairs and shut herself in her bedroom for half-an-hour, and
the maid, who was 'doing the rooms' hard by, reported afterwards to
the cook that she had 'heard missus takin' on awful in there,
a-sobbin', and groanin', and prayin' she was, all together like, it
quite upset her to 'ear it.'

There were no traces of emotion on her face, however, when she came
down again, and only an additional shade of grimness in her voice and
manner to tell of the half-hour's agony in which her mother's heart
had warred against her pride and her principles.

CHAPTER XII.

LAUNCHED.

Mark had now cut himself adrift and established himself in rooms in
one of the small streets about Connaught Square, where he waited for
his schemes to accomplish themselves. He still retained his mastership
at St. Peter's, although he hoped to be able to throw that up as soon
as he could do so with any prudence, and the time that was not
occupied by his school duties he devoted to the perfecting of his
friend's work. It was hardly a labour of love, and he came to it with
an ever-increasing weariness; all the tedious toiling through piles of
proofs and revised proofs, the weeding out of ingenious perversions
which seemed to possess a hydra-like power of multiplication after the
first eradication, began to inspire him with an infinite loathing of
this book which was his and not his own.

It had never interested him; he had never been able to feel the
slightest admiration for any part of it, and at times he ceased to
believe in it altogether, and think that, after all, he had
transgressed to no purpose, and that his own book would have been a
stronger staff to lean upon than this reed he had borrowed. But he had
to go on with it now, and trust to his good-luck for the consequences;
but still there were moments when he trembled at what he had done, and
could not bear to be so constantly reminde