‘Why should she not take him home with her?’ said Lady Rowley.

‘Because I will not have it so,’ replied Trevelyan.  ’Because I choose that it should be understood that I am to be the master of my own affairs.’

Mrs Trevelyan had now thrown aside her bonnet and her veil, and was covering her child with caresses.  The poor little fellow, whose mind had been utterly dismayed by the events which had occurred to him since his capture, though he returned her kisses, did so in fear and trembling.  And he was still sobbing, rubbing his eyes with his knuckles, and by no means yielding himself with his whole heart to his mother’s tenderness as she would have had him do.  ‘Louey,’ she said, whispering to him, ‘you know mamma; you haven’t forgotten mamma?’ He half murmured some little infantine word through his sobs, and then put his cheek up to be pressed against his mother’s face.  ’Louey will never, never forget his own mamma will he, Louey?’ The poor boy had no assurances to give, and could only raise his cheek again to be kissed.  In the meantime Lady Rowley and Trevelyan were standing by, not speaking to each other, regarding the scene in silence.

She, Lady Rowley, could see that he was frightfully altered in appearance, even since the day on which she had so lately met him in the City.  His cheeks were thin and haggard, and his eyes were deep and very bright, and he moved them quickly from side to side, as though ever suspecting something.  He seemed to be smaller in stature, withered, as it were, as though he had melted away.  And, though he stood looking upon his wife and child, he was not for a moment still.  He would change the posture of his hands and arms, moving them quickly with little surreptitious jerks; and would shuffle his feet upon the floor, almost without altering his position.  His clothes hung about him, and his linen was soiled and worn.  Lady Rowley noticed this especially, as he had been a man peculiarly given to neatness of apparel.  He was the first to speak.  ‘You have come down here in a cab?’ said he.

‘Yes in a cab, from London,’ said Lady Rowley.

’Of course you will go back in it?  You cannot stay here.  There is no accommodation.  It is a wretched place, but it suits the boy.  As for me, all places are now alike.’

‘Louis,’ said his wife, springing up from her knees, coming to him, and taking his right hand between both her own, ’you will let me take him with me.  I know you will let me take him with me.’

‘I cannot do that, Emily; it would be wrong.’

’Wrong to restore a child to his mother?  Oh, Louis, think of it, What must my life be without him or you?’

‘Don’t talk of me.  It is too late for that.’