to hope it." There had been a bunch of keys dangling from
the secretary, of which as she said these words Mrs. Brookenham took
possession. Her air on observing them had promptly become that of having
been in search of them, and a moment after she had passed across the
room they were in her pocket. "If you don't go what excuse will you
give?"

"Do you mean to YOU, mummy?"

She stood before him and now dismally looked at him. "What's the matter
with you? What an extraordinary time to take a nap!"

He had fallen back in the chair, from the depths of which he met her
eyes. "Why it's just THE time, mummy. I did it on purpose. I can always
go to sleep when I like. I assure you it sees one through things!"

She turned away with impatience and, glancing about the room, perceived
on a small table of the same type as the secretary a somewhat massive
book with the label of a circulating library, which she proceeded to
pick up as for refuge from the impression made on her by her boy. He
watched her do this and watched her then slightly pause at the wide
window that, in Buckingham Crescent, commanded the prospect they had
ramified rearward to enjoy; a medley of smoky brick and spotty stucco,
of other undressed backs, of glass invidiously opaque, of roofs and
chimney-pots and stables unnaturally near--one of the private pictures
that in London, in select situations, run up, as the phrase is, the
rent. There was no indication of value now, however, in the character
conferred on the scene by a cold spring rain. The place had moreover
a confessed out-of-season vacancy. She appeared to have determined on
silence for the present mark of her relation with Harold, yet she soon
failed to resist a sufficiently poor reason for breaking it. "Be so good
as to get out of my chair."

"What will you do for me," he asked, "if I oblige you?"

He never moved--but as if only the more directly and intimately to meet
her--and she stood again before the fire and sounded his strange little
face. "I don't know what it is, but you give me sometimes a kind of
terror."

"A terror, mamma?"

She found another place, sinking sadly down and opening her book, and
the next moment he got up and came over to kiss her, on which she drew
her cheek wearily aside. "You bore me quite to death," she coldly said,
"and I give you up to your fate."

"What do you call my fate?"

"Oh something dreadful--if only by its being publicly ridiculous."
She turned vaguely t