but he probably reflected that should he now be successful,
time might probably change the feeling which had just been expressed.
'Mr Broune,' she said, 'I am now so agitated that you had better leave
me. And it is very late. The servant is sitting up, and will wonder
that you should remain. It is near two o'clock.'

'When may I hope for an answer?'

'You shall not be kept waiting. I will write to you, almost at once. I
will write to you,--to-morrow; say the day after to-morrow, on Thursday. I
feel that I ought to have been prepared with an answer; but I am so
surprised that I have none ready.' He took her hand in his, and
kissing it, left her without another word.

As he was about to open the front door to let himself out, a key from
the other side raised the latch, and Sir Felix, returning from his
club, entered his mother's house. The young man looked up into Mr
Broune's face with mingled impudence and surprise. 'Halloo, old
fellow,' he said, 'you've been keeping it up late here; haven't you?'
He was nearly drunk, and Mr Broune, perceiving his condition, passed
him without a word. Lady Carbury was still standing in the
drawing-room, struck with amazement at the scene which had just
passed, full of doubt as to her future conduct, when she heard her son
tumbling up the stairs. It was impossible for her not to go out to
him. 'Felix,' she said, 'why do you make so much noise as you come
in?'

'Noish! I'm not making any noish. I think I'm very early. Your
people's only just gone. I shaw shat editor fellow at the door that
won't call himself Brown. He'sh great ass'h, that fellow. All right,
mother. Oh, ye'sh, I'm all right.' And so he tumbled up to bed, and
his mother followed him to see that the candle was at any rate placed
squarely on the table, beyond the reach of the bed curtains.

Mr Broune as he walked to his newspaper office experienced all those
pangs of doubt which a man feels when he has just done that which for
days and weeks past he has almost resolved that he had better leave
undone. That last apparition which he had encountered at his lady
love's door certainly had not tended to reassure him. What curse can
be much greater than that inflicted by a drunken, reprobate son? The
evil, when in the course of things it comes upon a man, has to be
borne; but why should a man in middle life unnecessarily afflict
himself with so terrible a misfortune? The woman, too, was devoted to
the cub! Then thousands of oth