I may pass very quickly over the next two years.  In August, 1870, a little sister was born to my son, and the recovery was slow and tedious, for my general health had been failing for some time.  I was, among other things, fretting much about my mother, who was in sore trouble.  A lawyer in whom she had had the most perfect confidence betrayed it; for years she had paid all her large accounts through him, and she had placed her money in his hands.  Suddenly he was discovered by his partners to have been behaving unfairly; the crash came, and my mother found that all the money given by her for discharge of liabilities had vanished, while the accounts were unpaid, and that she was involved in debt to a very serious extent.  The shock was a very terrible one to her, for she was too old to begin the world afresh.  She sold off all she had, and used the money, as far as it would go, to pay the debts she believed to have been long ago discharged, and she was thus left penniless after thinking she had made a little competence for her old age.  Lord Hatherley’s influence obtained for my brother the post of undersecretary to the Society of Arts, and also some work from the Patent Office, and my mother went to live with him.  But the dependence was intolerable to her, though she never let anyone but myself know she suffered, and even I, until her last illness, never knew how great her suffering had been.  The feeling of debt weighed on her, and broke her heart; all day long while my brother was at his office, through the bitter winter weather, she would sit without a fire, lighting it only a little before his home-coming, so that she might save all the expense she could; often and often she would go out about half-past twelve, saying that she was going out to lunch, and would walk about till late in the afternoon, so as to avoid the lunch-hour at home.  I have always felt that the winter of 1870-1 killed her, though she lived on for three years longer; it made her an old broken woman, and crushed her brave spirit.  How often I have thought since:  “If only I had not left her!  I should have seen she was suffering, and should have saved her.”  One little chance help I gave her, on a brief visit to town.  She was looking very ill, and I coaxed out of her that her back was always aching, and that she never had a moment free from pain.  Luckily I had that morning received a letter containing L2 2s. from my liberal Family Herald editor, and as, glancing round the room, I saw there were only ordinary chairs, I disregarded all questions as to the legal ownership of the money, and marched out without saying a word, and bought for L1 15s. a nice cushiony chair, just like one she used to have at Harrow, and had it sent home to her.  For a moment she was distressed, but I told her I had earned the money, and so she was satisfied.  “Oh, the rest!” she said softly once or twice during the evening.  I have that chair still, and mean to keep it as long as I live.