e shan't say I
swindled him.'

'I think you ought to do that, dear,' said Mabel. But in her heart
she felt a heavy wonder that he should ever have consented to take the
money at all.

Mark had received a fairly large sum for his second book, out of which
he was well able to refund the allowance, and the next day he went
down to Woodbine Villa, where, instead of the violent scene of
recrimination he had prepared himself to go through, a very different,
if not less painful, experience awaited him. Uncle Solomon had reached
his house safely the day before, but, in relating what he had heard to
his sister, had given way to a second burst of passion, which had
ended in a seizure of some kind.

Mark was allowed to see him, on his own earnest entreaty, and was
struck with remorse when he saw the lamentable state to which his own
conduct had had no small share in reducing the old man. Were the
consequences of that one act of folly and meanness _never_ to cease?
he wondered, wretchedly, as he stood there. His uncle allowed his hand
to be shaken; he even took Mark's cheque with his stiff hand, and made
a sign that his sister was to take charge of it. He could speak, but
his brain had lost all command over his tongue, and what he said had a
ghastly inappropriateness to the occasion. He saw this dully himself,
and gave up the attempt at last, and began to cry piteously at his
inability to convey his meaning; whether he wished for a
reconciliation then or nursed his rage to the last, Mark never knew.
He went down on several other occasions during his uncle's lingering
illness, but always with the same result. Mr. Lightowler suffered all
the tortures of perfect consciousness, combined with the powerlessness
to express any but the most simple wish: if he desired to undo the
past in any way, no one divined his intention or helped him to carry
it out; and when the end came suddenly, it was found that he had not
died intestate, and the will, after giving a certain annuity to the
sister who had lived with him, left the bulk of his estate to go in
founding Lightowler scholarships in the School for Commercial
Travellers' Orphans. The Ashburn family were given trifling legacies;
Mark, however, 'having seen fit to go his own way in life, and render
useless all the expense to which I have been put for his advancement,'
was expressly excepted from taking any benefit under the will.

But Mark had expected nothing else, and long before his a