Young Gordon went into Miss Bethune’s sitting-room next morning so early that she was still at breakfast, lingering over her second cup of tea. His eyes had the look of eyes which had not slept, and that air of mingled fatigue and excitement which shows that a great crisis which had just come was about his whole person. His energetic young limbs were languid with it. He threw himself into a chair, as if even that support and repose were comfortable, and an ease to his whole being. “She rallied for a moment after you were gone,” he said in a low voice, not looking at his companion, “but not enough to notice anything. The doctor said there was no pain or suffering--if he knows anything about it.” “Ay, if he knows,” Miss Bethune said. “And so she is gone,” said the young man with a deep sigh. He struggled for a moment with his voice, which went from him in the sudden access of sorrow. After a minute he resumed: “She’s gone, and my occupation, all my reasons for living, seem to be gone too. I know no more what is going to happen. I was her son yesterday, and did everything for her; now I don’t know what I am. I am nobody, with scarcely the right even to be there.” “What do you mean? Everybody must know what you have been to her, and her to you, all your life.” The young man was leaning forward in his chair bent almost double, with his eyes fixed on the floor. “Yes,” he said, “I never understood it before: but I know now what it is to have no rightful place, to have been only a dependent on their kindness. When my guardian died I did not feel it, because she was still there to think of me, and I was her representative in everything; but now the solicitor has taken the command, and makes me see I am nobody. It is not for the money,” the young man said, with a wave of his hand. “Let that go however she wished. God knows I would never complain. But I might have been allowed to do something for her, to manage things for her as I have done--oh, almost ever since I can remember.” He looked up with a pale and troubled smile, wistful for sympathy. “I feel as if I had been cut adrift,” he said. “My poor boy! But she must have provided for you, fulfilled the expectations----” “Don’t say that!” he cried quickly. “There were no expectations. I can truly say I never thought upon the subject--never!--until we came here to London. Then it was forced upon me that I was good for nothing, did not know how to make my living. It was almost amusing at first, I was so unused to it; but not now I am afraid I am quite useless,” he added, with again a piteous smile. “I am in the state of the poor fellow in the Bible. ‘I can’t dig, and to beg I am ashamed.’ I don’t know,” he cried, “why I should trouble you with all this. But you said I was to come to you in the morning, and I feel I can speak to you. That’s about all the explanation there is.”