“He knows very well what he is to me and to you,” Lady Markham said. In this particular she spoke with perfect calm, not fearing anything. “How should he not know? I have not hidden it from him that a great part of the happiness of my life hangs upon his. It seems ungrateful when one has so many blessings; but, oh! if _one_ is in trouble, how can you be comforted though all the others are well? All your heart goes to the one. It is not that you love the others less, but _him_ more--_him_ more.” Sir William listened to this outburst without a word. They were bearing one burden between them, and yet each had a separate burden to bear. His heart would not be racked like hers by the desertion of the boy. He would not concentrate his whole soul on Paul because Paul was in trouble. But on the other hand, she was altogether unaware of what was in his thoughts, the doubtful position in which perhaps Paul might one day find himself; the need there was that his future should be within his own power to shape and form. Also Sir William was aware of the disappointment and misery awaiting those who compromise their whole lives in one fit of foolish passion, and secure their own misery by a hasty marriage. These were the things he was thinking of. He saw his son waking up to the realities of a life very different from anything he had dreamed--and encumbered, he, so fastidious, so fantastical, with an uneducated woman and all the miseries of premature fatherhood. He groaned as this picture arose in his mind. “Trouble,” he said. “Yes, I suppose if a young man allows himself to get entangled, there is trouble involved in the breaking of the tie; but not half so much trouble as will come after, when his life is dragged down by association with a woman like that,--when he has a wretched home, a sordid life, a hundred miserable necessities to provide for,--you don’t know what it is, you can’t know what it is----” He broke off abruptly. Would she perhaps suspect him--_him_, her husband--of having learned by experience what these horrors were? But no such notion entered Lady Markham’s mind. “No,” she said; “I think you are wrong, William. I think it is not _that_ that is in my boy’s mind. Oh, if one could know--if one could feel sure, that his heart was open as it used to be!”