Perhaps it had been a relief to his jealous spirit to find his mother thus alone, unaccompanied, as was usually the case when he was in the house, by the envied Eustace, to be the witness of his discomfiture, and an auditor of his misfortune. And when, perceiving that something was amiss, she approached, and, without inquiry, sat down silently by his side, he did not now shrink from the fair soft hand which, with almost timid tenderness, was placed in gentle sympathy on his arm, but burst forth at once in softened accents of appeal with the grievous fact. "Mother, what am I to do? I have lost upon the Derby a thousand pounds; have it I must immediately. I cannot tell my father; some one must get it out of him. Marryott won't--will you?" The mother withdrew the hand which, emboldened by her young son's unwonted show of confiding consideration, had ventured to begin to part the dark matted locks from his heated brow. Nor was this done from dismay at the chief purport of this desperate intelligence, but from the cold pang with which these concluding words struck upon her ear: "Marryott won't--will you?" It had not then been the impulse of his filial heart, as for a few brief minutes she had gladly hoped, to fly to his mother in his distress. He had gone to another first, and only come to her as a last resource--as often when a boy had been the case, when Marryott, for fear of his father's displeasure at the expense, had refused him some indulgence--some of those "good things" we have heard the man Eugene so feelingly deplore, and with which the mother had supplied him from her own too circumscribed resources. Had not the present emergency been out of the question to her limited powers, how willingly would she in the same manner have relieved her son of his pressing anxiety. As it was, the momentary pang of bitterness allayed, without giving way to any irritating manifestation of her feelings, with regard to his astounding communication, she only expressed her sorrow at his misfortune and perplexity; and refused not to take upon herself the office he demanded of her. "Alas, Eugene! you know the extent of the influence I possess," she sadly observed. "I can but break to your father what you have related, and trust to his general indulgence towards you, rather than to any regard he may be inclined to pay to entreaties of mine in your behalf." "Exactly; that is all I want, mother; tell him that I will work hard at that d--d bank for the next year--that I will make it up to him in some way--anything in the world; but if he does not let me have it, I must blow my brains out--that's all." And the mother, sadly sighing over the ruinous course--ruinous as regarded his soul's welfare--in which her son had so early embarked--and she, without any power to influence or to restrain--left the room.