being, in early youth, wearied and goaded on all sides, might probably have persevered through the darkness till daylight came; but the catastrophe, the dismissal, and the perception that he could only defend himself at the expense of his idol’s little brother, all exaggerated by youthful imagination, were too much for his balance of judgment, and he fled without giving himself time to realise how much worse he made it for those he left behind him.

Of course he perceived it all now, and the more bitterly from his sister’s wanderings, but the morbid exaggeration was gone.  The actual taste of a recruit’s life had shown him that there were worse things than employment at the quarries with his home awaiting him, and his cell had been a place of thought and recovery of his senses.  He had never seriously expected conviction, and Sir Jasper’s visit had given him a spring of hopeful resignation, in which thoughts stirred of doing his duty, and winning his way after his father’s example, and taking the trials of his military life as the just cross of his wrong-doing in entering it.

His liberation and Mr. White’s kindness had not altered this frame.  He was too unhappy to feel his residence in the great house anything but a restraint; he could not help believing that he had hastened his mother’s death, and could only bow his head meekly under his brother’s reproaches, alike for that and for his folly and imprudence and the disgrace he had brought on the family.

‘And now you’ll, be currying favour and cutting out every one else,’ had been a sting which added fresh force to Alexis’s desire to escape from his kinsman’s house to sleep at home as soon as his brother had gone; and Richard had seen enough of Sir Jasper and of Mr. White to be anxious to return to his office at Leeds as soon as possible, and to regulate his affairs beyond their reach.

Alexis knew that he had avoided a duty in not working out his three months’ term, and likewise that his earnings were necessary to the family all the more for his sister being laid aside.  He knew that he hardly deserved to resume his post, and he merely asked permission so to do, and it was granted at once, but curtly and coldly.

Mr. Flight had asked if he had not found the going among the other clerks very trying.

‘I had other things to think of,’ said Alexis sadly, then recalling himself.  ’Yes; Jones did sneer a little, but the others stopped that.  They knew I was down, you see.’

‘And you mean to go on?’

’If I may.  That, and for my sister to get better, is all I can dare to hope.  My madness and selfishness have shown me unworthy of all that I once dreamt of.’