Charles slightly coloured.

"I won't go on," added Campbell; "I pain you; it's no good; perhaps I am
making matters worse."

Neither spoke for some time. At length Charles got up, came up to
Campbell, took his hand, and kissed it. "You have been a kind,
disinterested friend to me for two years," he said; "you have given me a
lodging under your roof; and now we are soon to be united by closer
ties. God reward you; but 'let me go, for the day breaketh.'"

"It is hopeless!" cried Campbell; "let us part friends: I must break it
to your mother."

In ten days after this conversation Charles was ready for his journey;
his room put to rights; his portmanteau strapped; and a gig at the door,
which was to take him the first stage. He was to go round by Boughton;
it had been arranged by Campbell and Mary that it would be best for him
not to see his mother (to whom Campbell had broken the matter at once)
till he took leave of her. It would be needless pain to both of them to
attempt an interview sooner.

Charles leapt from the gig with a beating heart, and ran up to his
mother's room. She was sitting by the fire at her work when he entered;
she held out her hand coldly to him, and he sat down. Nothing was said
for a little while; then, without leaving off her occupation, she said,
"Well, Charles, and so you are leaving us. Where and how do you propose
to employ yourself when you have entered upon your new life?"

Charles answered that he had not yet turned his mind to the
consideration of anything but the great step on which everything else
depended.

There was another silence; then she said, "You won't find anywhere such
friends as you have had at home, Charles." Presently she continued, "You
have had everything in your favour, Charles; you have been blessed with
talents, advantages of education, easy circumstances; many a deserving
young man has to scramble on as he can."

Charles answered that he was deeply sensible how much he owed in
temporal matters to Providence, and that it was only at His bidding that
he was giving them up.

"We all looked up to you, Charles; perhaps we made too much of you;
well, God be with you; you have taken your line."

Poor Charles said that no one could conceive what it cost him to give up
what was so very dear to him, what was part of himself; there was
nothing on earth which he prized like his home.

"Then why do you leave us?" she said quickly; "you must have your way;
you do it,