"Can you not realize," he at last burst out, "that I, also, have a conscience? that I am no longer a child? and that I cannot see things as you do?" "Egbert," exclaimed his elder sister, lifting her hand deprecatingly, "we are not deaf." "If you will only follow your conscience," continued Mrs. Haldane, in her low monotone, "all will be well. It is your being carried away by gusts of impulse and violent passions that makes all the trouble. If you had followed your conscience you would at once have left Hillaton at my request, and hidden yourself in the seclusion that I indicated. If you had done so, you might have saved yourself and us from all that has since occurred." "But I would have lost my self-respect. I should have done worse--" "Self-respect!" interrupted his mother, with an expression akin to disgust flitting across her pale face. "How can you use that word after what has happened, and especially now that you are working among those vulgar factory people, and living with that profane old creature who goes by the name of 'Jerry Growler.' To think that you, who bear your father's name, should have fallen so low! The daily and hourly mortification of thinking of all this, here, where for so many years there was not a speck upon our family reputation, is more than flesh and blood can endure. Our only course now is to go away where we are not known. Our best hope is to make you appear like what your father meant you should be, and try to forget that you have been anything else; and if you have any sense of obligation to us left you will do what you can to carry out our efforts. Dr. Marks thinks you have met with 'a change of heart.' I am sure yon can prove it in no better way than by a docile acquiescence in the wishes of one who has a natural right to control you, and whose teachings," she added complacently, "had they been followed, would have enabled you to hold up your head to-day among the proudest in the land." Haldane buried his face in his hands, and fairly groaned, in his disappointment and sense of humiliation. "Is it possible," asked one of his sisters "that you thought that we could all go out to church to-day as usual, and commence life to-morrow where he left off when you first went away from home?"