Smith’s resentment and disappointment at the sight of the treasure his wife had hidden from him were unspeakable.  He was not an outwardly passionate man, and he was in mortal fear, not only of the giant who seemed to fill up all his little room, but also of anything that could compromise him with the police.  So he suppressed his passion, aware that resistance would bring out stories that could not bear the light.  Harold signed, and the golden apples were carried away to the office, where Mr. Smith was invited to come the next day and see them weighed.

That night Harold kept watch over his mother; and Dermot, who was thought to be at his friend’s shanty, kept watch near the door:  but Dick Smith, hating Harold’s presence, had gone on an excursion lasting some days, and before his father went in quest of him in the morning, Harold had a proposal ready—­namely, to continue to pay Smith what he already allowed his mother, with an addition, provided he were allowed to take her with him to Dunedin, and, if possible, home.

Smith haggled, lamented, and pretended to hesitate, but accepted the terms at last, and then showed considerable haste in setting the party off on their journey before his son should come home, fearing, perhaps, some deadly deed if Dick should discover what a prey the poor woman had concealed from him, while she was within his reach; and as the worth of the apples was estimated at about twenty pounds beyond the debt, Harold paid this to him at once, and they left him in the meek, plausible, tearful stage of intoxication, piteously taking leave of his wife as if she were the very darling of his heart, and making fine speeches about his resolution to consign her to her son for the sake of her health.  So contemptible had the poor creature become, that Harold found it easier to pity than to hate him.

Besides, Harold had little thought then to spare from the eager filial and maternal affection that had been in abeyance all the years since poor Alice’s unhappy marriage.  For a little while the mother and son were all in all to each other.  The much-enduring woman, used to neglected physical suffering, bore the journey apparently well, when watched over and guarded with a tender kindness recalling that of the husband of her youth; and Harold wrote to me from Dunedin full of hope and gladness, aware that his mother could never be well again, but trusting that we might yet give her such peace and rest as she had never yet tasted.

Again came bitter vexation in Eustace’s way of receiving the intelligence.  “I hope he does not mean to bring her here.  It would be so extremely inconvenient—­not a widow even!  It would just confirm all the scandals I have surmounted.”

“I thought she had been almost as much a mother to you as your own?”

“Oh, that was when I was at school, and they were paid for it.  Besides, what a deceitful fellow Smith was, and how he defrauded me.”