“The _Age_!” said her son, in a tone that had a thrill of horror in it. “Why walk all that distance to the Hall to get a look at the _Age_ when Parson Nugent would have been only too pleased to lend you his _Banner_?” “The reason is this, my dear boy,” said his mother impressively. “All my life I have been accustomed to look upon the _Age_ as the first English newspaper.” “I expect you are right, you dear old Amazon,” said her son, strangling a groan. “No, Henry, I am not right. I am prepared to believe there was a time when the _Age_ was the first English newspaper, but in my opinion it is so no longer. I shall never place my trust in the _Age_ again.” “A heavy blow for Printing Press Square,” said Northcote, laughing to restrain his tears. “I consider that leading article it had about the trial, and the terms in which it referred to you, my boy, to be a disgrace to English journalism. In fact, I wrote to the editor to say so.” “What did you find to say to the editor?” asked Northcote feebly. “I said it was contemptible that a newspaper of such a widespread influence as the _Age_ should lend itself to a faction whose aim was to suppress young men of talent.” “And what had the editor to say to that?” “Very wisely he did not reply. Perhaps I was somewhat severe in my letter, but I felt very strongly upon the point and I do not regret that I expressed myself at length.” “In the name of wonder, what else did you say to the editor?” “I said this faction of which I complained had been very mischievous in its influence in this country, but in the end it had always failed in its object, as in the end, Henry, everything that is merely negative and destructive and retardatory must fail. I cited the cases of Benjamin Disraeli and the poet Keats.” “I suppose,” said Northcote, with a dull sense of agony overspreading his veins, “it could not occur to you, old woman, that by any possibility the _Age_ was justified in the course it took?” “It could not, Henry,” said his mother. Her air of finality bewildered him. Yet involuntarily he raised his eyes to her face, and, for the first time in his life as he looked at it, he was able to penetrate through its heroic commonness. The features were harsh and aggressive and scarcely lit by the mind, but the rigidity of such a nature in the teeth of public opinion had appeared to shed over them a little of the bloom that proceeds from the elevation of the intellect. It was a kind of apotheosis of the power of faith. Her eyes were deep blue, strangely unfearing and clear, wide-lidded, steady in their gaze. It was little enough that they had the capacity to see, but whatever they lacked in range derived compensation from mere force of vision. They were inaccessible to the changes which are wrought by influences from without. Whatever they had looked on once could never be modified by external causes.