Lady Markham did not make any reply. She would not say anything about the chief object of her mission. What she wanted above all things was to test the truthfulness of her son’s assertion that this daughter was nothing to him. Sir William put no faith in these assertions; but Paul’s mother believed in him with trembling, even while she feared, and longed for some indirect testimony which would convince her husband. She thought over it all night, while she lay awake listening to the clocks answering each other with hour after hour. Paul had not responded to his mother’s inquiries, as they had all hoped. He had resisted her questions proudly, and he had not attempted to explain. “You have made up your mind, you and my father, that I have not spoken the truth,” he said. “Why should I repeat what you will not believe? I have nothing to say but what I have said.” “Oh, Paul, look in my face, and tell me--tell me!” she said. “I will not doubt you.” But he was obdurate. “I have told you,” he said, “and you have doubted.” There was something even in this pride and indignant resistance of her entreaties which moved his mother to believe in him; but Sir William was of a different opinion. Her heart was torn asunder with doubt and fear; and here was the one way in which she could know. Her husband might think of Spears as a dangerous demagogue, but to her he was a man whose face had brightened at the sight of her children, a man to whom she had given her own ready sympathy--a human creature, whom she knew. Had she not a right to go to him, to appeal to him to relinquish his hold on her boy? Whether it was by his arguments, or by something less abstract, he had, it seemed, power which was almost absolute over her boy. Lady Markham did not mean to say anything to him about his daughter, to ask of him whether it was love for her which was leading Paul away; but could any one doubt that she would discover the truth if she could see him, and speak to him without any one to interfere between them? She could not endure the doubts of Paul which rose in her own mind, nor to be obliged to listen to his father’s doubts of him, and say no word in his defence.