"What does she mean? What can she mean?" George Dallas asked himself this question again and again, as he stood looking at the letter in his hand. "What has _she_ done? A mean and deliberate deceit--some dishonourable transaction? My mother could not do anything deserving to be so called. It is impossible. Even if she could contemplate such a thing, she would not know how to set about it. God bless her!" He sat down by the table, drew the dingy Britannia-metal teapot over beside his cup, and sat with his hand resting idly upon the distorted handle, still thinking less of the relief which the letter had brought him, than of the mysterious terms in which it was couched. "She can't have got it out of Carruthers without his knowing anything about it?" he mused. "No; besides, getting it from him at all, is precisely the thing she told me she could not do. Well, I must wait to know; but how good of her to get it! Who's the fellow who says a man can have only one mother? By Jove, how right he is!" Then George ate his breakfast hastily, and, putting the precious letter in his breast-pocket, went to Routh's lodgings. "I dare say they're not up," he thought, as he knocked at the door, and patiently waited the lingering approach of the slipshod servant. "Routh was as late as I was last night, and I know she always sits up for him." He was right; they had not yet appeared in the sitting-room, and he had time for a good deal of walking up and down, and much cogitation over his mother's letter, before Harriet appeared. She was looking anxious, Dallas thought, so he stepped forward even more eagerly than usual, and told her in hurried tones of gladness that the post had brought him good news, and that his mother was going to give him the money. "I don't know how she has contrived to get it, Mrs. Routh," he said. "Does she not tell you, then?" asked Harriet, as she eyed with some curiosity the letter which Dallas had taken out of his pocket, and which he turned about in his hand, as he stood talking to her. As she spoke, he replaced the letter in his pocket, and sat down. "No," he answered, moodily, "she does not; but she did not get it easily, I know--not without a very painful self-sacrifice; but here's Routh." "Ha! Dallas, my boy," said Routh, after he had directed one fleeting glance of inquiry towards his wife, and almost before he had fairly entered the room. "You're early--any news?" "Very good news," replied Dallas; and he repeated the information he had already given Harriet. Routh received it with a somewhat feigned warmth, but Dallas was too much excited by his own feelings to perceive the impression which the news really produced on Routh. "Is your letter from the great Mr. Carruthers himself?" said Routh; "from the provincial magnate who has the honour of being stepfather to you--your magnificent three-tailed bashaw?" "Oh dear no!" said the young man grimly; "not from him. My letter is from my mother."