d Nick, smiling still. "Is my being
kept by Julia what you call my making an effort for myself?"

Lady Agnes hesitated; then "You needn't insult Julia!" she replied.

"Moreover, if I've _her_ money I shan't want his," Nick unheedingly
remarked.

Again his mother waited before answering; after which she produced: "And
pray wouldn't you wish to be independent?"

"You're delightful, dear mother--you're very delightful! I particularly
like your conception of independence. Doesn't it occur to you that at a
pinch I might improve my fortune by some other means than by making a
mercenary marriage or by currying favour with a rich old gentleman?
Doesn't it occur to you that I might work?"

"Work at politics? How does that make money, honourably?"

"I don't mean at politics."

"What do you mean then?"--and she seemed to challenge him to phrase it
if he dared. This demonstration of her face and voice might have
affected him, for he remained silent and she continued: "Are you elected
or not?"

"It seems a dream," he rather flatly returned.

"If you are, act accordingly and don't mix up things that are as wide
asunder as the poles!" She spoke with sternness and his silence appeared
again to represent an admission that her sternness counted for him.
Possibly she was touched by it; after a few moments, at any rate, during
which nothing more passed between them, she appealed to him in a gentler
and more anxious key, which had this virtue to touch him that he knew it
was absolutely the first time in her life she had really begged for
anything. She had never been obliged to beg; she had got on without it
and most things had come to her. He might judge therefore in what a
light she regarded this boon for which in her bereft old age she humbled
herself to be a suitor. There was such a pride in her that he could feel
what it cost her to go on her knees even to her son. He did judge how it
was in his power to gratify her; and as he was generous and imaginative
he was stirred and shaken as it came over him in a wave of figurative
suggestion that he might make up to her for many things. He scarcely
needed to hear her ask with a pleading wail that was almost tragic:
"Don't you see how things have turned out for us? Don't you know how
unhappy I am, don't you know what a bitterness----?" She stopped with a
sob in her voice and he recognised vividly this last tribulation, the
unhealed wound of her change of life and her lapse from eminen