Mrs. Yorke judged of all men by her knowledge of her late husband and of Carew, and of women by herself.  If it had not been for the artificialities of society, she might have been right; but they are powerful, and she knew little about them.  In some matters she was exceedingly sagacious.  She did not entertain the alarm which would have been felt by some mothers with respect to her son’s morals, probably exposed to some danger by his mode of life; perhaps she had not their scruples; and yet it is strange to see how light those weigh, even with our severest matrons, when any question of “position” is in the other scale:  they will not only permit their sons to herd with roues, provided they are persons of distinction, but even accept them for their sons-in-law.  Mrs. Yorke, being daughterless, had no temptation to commit this latter crime, but she was not displeased to imagine her Richard a man of gallantry; he would in that case be less likely to fall a victim to undowered charms.  “It is not your man-about-town who sacrifices his future in a love-match,” was her reflection.  On the other hand, no one knew better than herself what an easy prey to woman’s wiles is a young gentleman without experience.  It was for this reason, as well as because she loved to have her boy about her, that she had opposed Richard’s going to Midlandshire.  She knew Carew too well to hope that he would ever take into favor a son of hers, and she distrusted the country, with its opportunities for ensnaring youth into matrimonial engagements.  Thirty years ago, in a fortnight of village life together, she would have backed herself to have got a promise of marriage out of the Pope; and she did not believe this to be one of the lost arts among young persons of her sex.

Thus Mrs. Yorke had strained every nerve to get the necessary funds to make town-life pleasant to her son, and yet she had not succeeded.  It was not so much that he found his allowance insufficient, for he had various means of supplementing it, one of them (at which we have already hinted) a strange one enough; but the wayward fit was on him that takes so many of us in the early dawn of manhood; he was restless and eager for change, and the lessons which his mother had caused him to receive in landscape-painting furnished him with an excuse for wandering.  She had had him taught to sketch, because it was a likely sort of accomplishment to aid the scheme of life which she had planned for him; and he had taken up with the art more seriously than with any thing else.  But it was not in Richard’s nature to apply himself with assiduity to any pursuit.  Such callings as lay within his means and opportunities he was incapacitated for by education and temper.  He could not have occupied any subordinate position that required respectful behavior—­submission to the will of a master.  He had had to put the greatest restraint upon himself during his brief residence at Crompton, and it was more than doubtful if he could have maintained his