His mother gazed long and steadily into his eyes, and this time he bore her look.

‘Mother, you have not kissed me,’ he whispered.

‘And cannot, dear.  There is too much between us.’

His head fell upon her lap.

‘Hubert!’

He pressed her hand.

’How shall I live when you have gone from me again?  When you say good-bye, it will be as if I parted from you for ever.’

Hubert was silent.

‘Unless,’ she continued—­’unless I have your promise that you will no longer dishonour yourself.’

He rose from her side and stood in front of the fire; his mother looked and saw that he trembled.

‘No promise, Hubert,’ she said, ’that you cannot keep.  Rather than that, we will accept our fate, and be nothing to each other.’

’You know very well, mother, that that is impossible.  I cannot speak to you of what drove me to disregard your letters.  I love and honour you, and shall have to change my nature before I cease to do so.’

’To me, Hubert, you seem already to have changed.  I scarcely know you.’

‘I can’t defend myself to you,’ he said sadly.  ’We think so differently on subjects which allow of no compromise, that, even if I could speak openly, you would only condemn me the more.’

His mother turned upon him a grief-stricken and wondering face.

‘Since when have we differed so?’ she asked.  ’What has made us strangers to each other’s thoughts?  Surely, surely you are at one with me in condemning all that has led to this?  If your character has been too weak to resist temptation, you cannot have learnt to make evil your good?’

He kept silence.

‘You refuse me that last hope?’

Hubert moved impatiently.

’Mother, I can’t see beyond to-day!  I know nothing of what is before me.  It is the idlest trifling with words to say one will do this or that, when action in no way depends on one’s own calmer thought.  In this moment I could promise anything you ask; if I had my choice, I would be a child again and have no desire but to do your will, to be worthy in your eyes.  I hate my life and the years that have parted me from you.  Let us talk no more of it.’

Neither spoke again for some moments; then Hubert asked coldly—­

‘What has been done?’

‘Nothing,’ replied Mrs. Eldon, in the same tone.  ’Mr. Yottle has waited for your return before communicating with the relatives in London.’

‘I will go to Belwick in the morning,’ he said.  Then, after reflection, ‘Mr. Mutimer told you that he had destroyed his will?’

’No.  He had it from Mr. Yottle two days before his death, and on the day after—­the Monday—­Mr. Yottle was to have come to receive instructions for a new one.  It is nowhere to be found:  of course it was destroyed.’

‘I suppose there is no doubt of that?’ Hubert asked, with a show of indifference.