iserable to tell me? She tried
to all this morning, and I fought it off. I was miserable enough. Why
should I be made more miserable to hear her perhaps excusing herself to
me? But at last she had driven me into a corner, angry as I was--Uncle
John, I was angry, furious, with my mother--fancy! with my mother."

John did not say anything, but he nodded his head in assent. How well he
understood it all!

"And just then, at that moment, he came. I am angry with her no more.
I know whatever happened she was right. Angry with her, my poor dear,
dearest mother! Whatever happened she was right. It was best that she
should not tell me. I am on her side all through--all through! Do you
hear me, Uncle John! I have seen you look as if you blamed her. Don't
again while I am there. Whatever she has done it has been the right
thing all through!"

"Pippo," said John, with a little quivering about the mouth, "give me
your hand again, old fellow, you're my own boy."

"Nobody shall so much as look as if they blamed her," cried the boy,
"while I am alive!"

Oh, how near he was to crying, and how resolute not to break down,
though something got into his throat and almost choked him, and his eyes
were so full that it was a miracle they did not brim over. Excitement,
distress, pain, the first touch of human misery he had ever known almost
overmastered Philip. He got up and walked about the room, and talked and
talked. He who had never concealed anything, who had never had anything
to conceal. And for four-and-twenty hours he had been silent with a
great secret upon his soul. John was too wise to check the outpouring.
He listened to everything, assented, soothed, imperceptibly led him to
gentler thoughts.

"And what does he mean," cried the boy at last, "with his new name? I
shall have no name but my own, the one my mother gave me. I am Philip
Compton, and nothing else. What right has he, the first time he ever saw
me, to put upon me another name?"

"What name?"

"He called me Lomond--or something like that," said young Philip: and
then there came a sort of stillness over his excitement, a lull in the
storm. Some vague idea what it meant came all at once into the boy's
mind: and a thrill of curiosity, of another kind of excitement, of
rising thoughts which he did not hardly understand, struggled up through
the other zone of passion. He was half ashamed, having just poured forth
all his feelings, to show that there was something else