Mrs. Raynor could not forbear a smile. "I was not thinking of the table, Charles; the gravies and the puddings; but of our fast, artificial existence. We seem to have no rest at all. It is always excitement; nothing but excitement. We went out last night; we go out to dinner to-morrow night; people come here the next night. Every day that we are at home there is something; if it's not luncheon and afternoon-tea, it's dinner; and if it's not dinner, it's supper. I have to think of it all; the entertainments and the dress, and everything; and to go out when you go; and--and I feel it is getting rather too much for me." "Then lie up, mother, for a few days," advised Charles, affectionately. "Keep by your own fire, and turn things over to Alice and the servants. You will soon be all right again." Mrs. Raynor did not answer. She held Charles's hand in her own, and was looking steadfastly at the flickering blaze. A silence ensued. Charles lost himself in a train of thought. "What about this trouble of yours, Charley?" It was a very unpleasant awakening for him. Of all things, this is what he had wanted to keep from her. His ingenuous face--and it was an ingenuous face in spite of the wine bills--flushed deeply with annoyance. "It's what you need not have heard about, mother. I came away from Oxford without paying a few pounds I owe there; that's all. There need be no fuss about it." "I hear of wine bills, and horses, and things of that kind. Oh, my dear, _need_ you have entered into that fast sort of life?" "Others enter into it," said Charley. "It is not so much the cost that troubles me," added Mrs. Raynor, in loving tones; "that can be met somehow. It is----" She stopped as if wanting words. "It is what, mother?" "Charley, my dear, what I think of is this--that you may be falling into the world's evil ways. It is so easy to do it; you young lads are so inexperienced and confiding; you think all is fair that looks fair; that no poison lurks in what has a specious surface. And oh, my boy, you know that there is a world after this world; and if you were to fall too deeply into the ways of _this_, to get to love it, to be unable to do without it, you might never gain the other. Some young lads that have fallen away from God have not cared to find Him again; never have found Him. "There has been no harm," said Charley. "And I assure you I don't often miss chapel." "Charley, dear, there's a verse in Ecclesiastes that I often think of," she resumed in low sweet tones. "All mothers think of it, I fancy, when their sons begin to go out in the world." "In Ecclesiastes?" repeated Charley. "The verse that Edina illuminated for us once, when she was staying at Spring Lawn. It was her doing it, I think, that helped to impress it so much on my memory." "I remember it, mother mine." And the words ran through Charley's thoughts as he spoke.