In bringing up Alick tied tight to her apron-strings, feeding him on moral pap, putting his mind into petticoats, and seeking to make him more of a woman than a man, Mrs. Corfield had defeated her design and destroyed her own influence.  During his early growth the boy had yielded to her without revolt, because he was more modest than self-assertive—­had no solid point of resistance and no definite purpose for which to resist; but after his college career he developed on an independent line, and his soul escaped altogether from his mother’s hold.  Had she let him ripen into manhood in the freedom of natural development, she would have been his chosen friend and confidante to the end:  having invaded the most secret chambers of his mind, and sought to mould every thought according to the pattern which she held best, when the reaction set in the pendulum swung back in proportion to its first beat; and as a protest against his former thraldom he now made her a stranger to his inner life and shut her out inexorably from the holy place of his sorrow.

The mother felt her son’s mind slipping from her, but what could she do?  Who can set time backward or reanimate the dead?  Day by day found him more silent and more suffering, the poor little woman nearly as miserable as himself.  But the name of Leam, standing as the spectre between them, was never mentioned after Mrs. Corfield’s first outburst of indignation at her flight—­indignation not because she was really angry with Leam, but because Alick was unhappy.

After Alick’s stern rejoinder, “Mother, the next time you speak ill of Leam Dundas I will leave your house for ever,” the subject dropped by mutual consent, but it was none the less a living barrier between them because raised and maintained in silence.

“Oh, these girls! these wicked girls!” Mrs. Corfield had said with a mother’s irrational anger when speaking of the circumstance to her husband.  “We bring up our boys only for them to take from us.  As soon as they begin to be some kind of comfort and to repay the anxiety of their early days, then a wretched little huzzy steps in and makes one’s life in vain.”

“Just so, my dear,” said Dr. Corfield quietly.  “These were the identical words which my mother said to me when I told her I was going to marry you.”

“Your mother never liked me, and I did like Leam,” said Mrs. Corfield tartly.

“As Leam Dundas, maybe; but as Leam the wife of your son, I doubt it.”

“If Alick had liked it—­” said Mrs. Corfield, half in tears.

“You would have been jealous,” returned her husband.  “No:  all girls are only daughters of Heth to the mothers of Jacobs, and I never knew one whom a mother thought good enough for her boy.”

“You need not discredit your own flesh and blood for a stranger,” cried Mrs. Corfield crossly; and the mute man with an aggravating smile suddenly seemed to repent of his unusual loquacity, and gradually subsided into himself and his calculations, from which he was so rarely aroused.