"What is it that has so irritated you, my dear Percy? What has made you return home in such a very different mood to that in which you left it? Tell me, my boy." Percy tried to keep silence, for he knew if he spoke he should, as he expressed it, be a child again, and his pride tried hard for victory. Even his father or Herbert at that moment would have chafed him into increased anger, but the almost passionate love and reverence which he felt for his mother triumphed over his wrath, and told him he was much more unhappy than angry; and that he longed for her to comfort him, as she always had done in his childish griefs; and so he put his arms round her, and laid his head on her shoulder and said, in a half-choked voice:-- "I am very unhappy, mother; I feel as if I had been every thing that was bad, and cruel, and foolish, and so it was a relief to be in a passion; but I did not mean you to hear it, and cause you more grief than I have done already." "You have been very thoughtless, very foolish, and not quite so firm as we could have wished, my own dear boy, but I will not have you accuse yourself of any graver faults," replied Mrs. Hamilton, as she lightly pushed back the clustering hair from his heated forehead, and the gentle touch of her cool hand seemed as restorative as her soothing words; and Percy, as he listened to her, as she continued speaking to him in the same strain for some little time, felt more relieved than five minutes before he thought possible, and more than ever determined that he would never act so thoughtlessly; or, if he were tempted to do so, never keep it concealed so long again. Mrs. Hamilton's anxious desire with him was, always to do justice to his better qualities, at the same time that she blamed and convinced him of his faults. It was a very delicate thing, and very difficult to succeed in, perhaps impossible to minds less peculiarly refined, and hearts less intensely anxious than Mrs. Hamilton's; but no difficulty, no failure, had ever deterred her--and in Percy she was already rewarded. He was of that high, fine spirit, that any unjust harshness would have actually confirmed in error--any unguarded word bring argument on argument, and so, for the mere sake of opposition, cause him to abide in his opinions, when the acknowledgment of his being right in some things, produced the voluntary confession of his error in others. "And now about these unfortunate verses, my dear boy; I am not quite clear as to their fate, how it happened that you did not destroy them directly you returned home."