‘Why for mamma go?’ sobbed the child.

’Mamma goes; oh, heaven and earth, why should she go?  She goes because her spirit is obstinate, and she will not bend.  She is stiff-necked, and will not submit herself.  But Louey must love mamma always, and mamma some day will come back to him, and be good to him.’

‘Mamma is good always,’ said the child.  Trevelyan had intended on this very afternoon to have gone up to town to transact business with Bozzle; for he still believed, though the aspect of the man was bitter to him as wormwood, that Bozzle was necessary to him in all his business.  And he still made appointments with the man, sometimes at Stony Walk, in the Borough, and sometimes at the tavern in Poulter’s Court, even though Bozzle not unfrequently neglected to attend the summons of his employer.  And he would go to his banker’s and draw out money, and then walk about the crowded lanes of the City, and afterwards return to his desolate lodgings at Willesden, thinking that he had been transacting business and that this business was exacted from him by the unfortunate position of his affairs.  But now he gave up his journey.  His retreat had been discovered; and there came upon him at once a fear that if he left the house his child would be taken.  His landlady told him on this very day that the boy ought to be sent to his mother, and had made him understand that it would not suit her to find a home any longer for one who was so singular in his proceedings.  He believed that his child would be given up at once, if he were not there to guard it.  He stayed at home, therefore, turning in his mind many schemes.  He had told his wife that he should go either to Italy or to America at once; but in doing so he had had no formed plan in his head.  He had simply imagined at the moment that such a threat would bring her to submission.  But now it became a question whether he would do better than go to America.  He suggested to himself that he should go to Canada, and fix himself with his boy on some remote farm, far away from any city; and would then invite his wife to join him if she would.  She was too obstinate, as he told himself, ever to yield, unless she should be absolutely softened and brought down to the ground by the loss of her child.  What would do this so effectually as the interposition of the broad ocean between him and her?  He sat thinking of this for the rest of the day, and Louey was left to the charge of the mistress of River’s Cottage.

‘Do you think he believes it, mamma?’ Mrs Trevelyan said to her mother when they had already made nearly half their journey home in the cab.  There had been nothing spoken hitherto between them, except some half-formed words of affection intended for consolation to the young mother in her great affliction.

‘He does not know what he believes, dearest.’

‘You heard what he said.  I was to own that I had sinned.’

’Sinned yes; because you will not obey him like a slave.  That is sin to him.’