“I ’m sure you have made a beautiful likeness of your poor little mother,” said Mrs. Hudson, coaxingly.

“I had done nothing before, and I have done nothing since!  I quarreled with an excellent man, the other day, from mere exasperation of my nerves, and threw away five thousand dollars!”

“Threw away—­five thousand dollars!” Roderick had been wandering among formidable abstractions and allusions too dark to penetrate.  But here was a concrete fact, lucidly stated, and poor Mrs. Hudson, for a moment, looked it in the face.  She repeated her son’s words a third time with a gasping murmur, and then, suddenly, she burst into tears.  Roderick went to her, sat down beside her, put his arm round her, fixed his eyes coldly on the floor, and waited for her to weep herself out.  She leaned her head on his shoulder and sobbed broken-heartedly.  She said not a word, she made no attempt to scold; but the desolation of her tears was overwhelming.  It lasted some time—­too long for Rowland’s courage.  He had stood silent, wishing simply to appear very respectful; but the elation that was mentioned a while since had utterly ebbed, and he found his situation intolerable.  He walked away—­not, perhaps, on tiptoe, but with a total absence of bravado in his tread.

The next day, while he was at home, the servant brought him the card of a visitor.  He read with surprise the name of Mrs. Hudson, and hurried forward to meet her.  He found her in his sitting-room, leaning on the arm of her son and looking very pale, her eyes red with weeping, and her lips tightly compressed.  Her advent puzzled him, and it was not for some time that he began to understand the motive of it.  Roderick’s countenance threw no light upon it; but Roderick’s countenance, full of light as it was, in a way, itself, had never thrown light upon anything.  He had not been in Rowland’s rooms for several weeks, and he immediately began to look at those of his own works that adorned them.  He lost himself in silent contemplation.  Mrs. Hudson had evidently armed herself with dignity, and, so far as she might, she meant to be impressive.  Her success may be measured by the fact that Rowland’s whole attention centred in the fear of seeing her begin to weep.  She told him that she had come to him for practical advice; she begged to remind him that she was a stranger in the land.  Where were they to go, please? what were they to do?  Rowland glanced at Roderick, but Roderick had his back turned and was gazing at his Adam with the intensity with which he might have examined Michael Angelo’s Moses.

“Roderick says he does n’t know, he does n’t care,” Mrs. Hudson said; “he leaves it entirely to you.”