“And indeed you are quite right,” said Mrs. Eastwood, faltering. She had herself inculcated this doctrine. Mercenary marriages she had held up many and many a time to the scorn of her family; but it is one thing to make a mercenary marriage, and another to inquire whether the future partner of your days has anything--“for her own sake,” said Mrs. Eastwood. But as Frederick was in a disagreeable state of mind, and ready to take offence on the smallest provocation, she did not take up this view of the question. The great revelation itself was the chief thing to be considered. “May I not know something at least about her, Frederick? Where did you meet her? So it is this that has absorbed you so much for some time? I have noticed it, though I did not know what it was. Is she pretty, is she nice? Do I know her? You will not refuse to tell me something about her, my dear.” “I cannot tell you, for there is nothing settled. It would be unfair to her until I know myself,” said Frederick; “but, mother, the first part is entirely within your power. And this is what I wanted--not to pour out any sentimental secrets into your ear, but to ask what I shall have to calculate upon. Of course,” said the young man, whose veins were boiling with impatience, “unless I have some satisfactory settlement with you it would be dishonourable for me to open my lips at all.” Mrs. Eastwood was silent. She seemed to have lost the power of utterance. Was Molyneux right after all? Was it to be a struggle to the death from henceforth--the children trying how much they could get, the parent how much she could withhold? She had not heard this suggestion made in words; but something like it she asked herself piteously, confused, and startled, and more shocked at herself for the shock and revulsion of feeling which this demand produced on her than with her son for making it. Was it possible that she was not ready instantly on the spot to give to him and all of them whatever they wanted to make them happy? She had said it of herself, and she believed it, that had they asked for the heart out of her bosom, she would have given it, and a kind of horror of herself fell upon her when she felt for the second time a rising of reluctance and almost resistance within her. On that well-remembered morning when the first appeal of this kind had been made to her, when Frederick had come to her bedside and told her he was ruined, no such feeling had been in her mind. She had cast about instantly what was to be done, and had made her sacrifice, with poignant grief for the cause, yet with a distinct pleasure in the power of succouring her boy. But this demand upon her excited no such feeling. Is it possible that a mother can deny her child anything that is for his good? she had asked often enough--and now she herself was in the position of denying. It struck at the very root of all her past principles of action, of all that she had believed and held by throughout her life.