When Mary handed him into the small parlor, he looked around it critically.  It was plainly furnished, but it had a home-like look; there were no cheap, common ornaments, and no cheap, gaudy pictures; the few adornments on the walls were in good taste and about the room were many pretty things which a woman’s hand might have made.

“Not at all bad so far,” he had said to himself; “but perhaps the Captain’s taste predominated.”  But when Mrs. Errol came into the room, he began to think she herself might have had something to do with it.  If he had not been quite a self-contained and stiff old gentleman, he would probably have started when he saw her.  She looked, in the simple black dress, fitting closely to her slender figure, more like a young girl than the mother of a boy of seven.  She had a pretty, sorrowful, young face, and a very tender, innocent look in her large brown eyes,—­the sorrowful look that had never quite left her face since her husband had died.  Cedric was used to seeing it there; the only times he had ever seen it fade out had been when he was playing with her or talking to her, and had said some old-fashioned thing, or used some long word he had picked up out of the newspapers or in his conversations with Mr. Hobbs.  He was fond of using long words, and he was always pleased when they made her laugh, though he could not understand why they were laughable; they were quite serious matters with him.  The lawyer’s experience taught him to read people’s characters very shrewdly, and as soon as he saw Cedric’s mother he knew that the old Earl had made a great mistake in thinking her a vulgar, mercenary woman.  Mr. Havisham had never been married, he had never even been in love, but he divined that this pretty young creature with the sweet voice and sad eyes had married Captain Errol only because she loved him with all her affectionate heart, and that she had never once thought it an advantage that he was an earl’s son.  And he saw he should have no trouble with her, and he began to feel that perhaps little Lord Fauntleroy might not be such a trial to his noble family, after all.  The Captain had been a handsome fellow, and the young mother was very pretty, and perhaps the boy might be well enough to look at.

When he first told Mrs. Errol what he had come for, she turned very pale.

“Oh!” she said; “will he have to be taken away from me?  We love each other so much!  He is such a happiness to me!  He is all I have.  I have tried to be a good mother to him.”  And her sweet young voice trembled, and the tears rushed into her eyes.  “You do not know what he has been to me!” she said.

The lawyer cleared his throat.