“I have her own explanation of why she has left Mirk Abbey,” replied the doctor; “but as for her return, that will depend upon yourselves--I mean upon Sir Richard and Captain Lisgard. For _you_, Letty, she bids me say have been at all times what a loving child should be to a parent.--Master Walter, your servant, sir.--No; I will not shake hands with a man who ruins his mother by gambling debts, and breaks her heart with hatred of his own brother.” “That is not true, at least I do hope, Walter?” said Sir Richard quickly. “No; false, upon my honour,” returned the captain. “My mother never told you to say that, sir.” “Not quite that--no, she did not,” admitted the little old man, whose eyes had begun to lose their hard and inexorable expression, notwithstanding his harsh words, from the moment that Walter entered the room. It was so difficult even for a social philosopher to be severe and stern with that young man. “Yet I am bound to say, Walter, that it is you who have been most to blame with respect to that good mother, who only lives but for her children, and whose very love for them has compelled her to withdraw herself from beneath this roof. I will not now dwell upon your clandestine marriage; I leave yourself to imagine how the want of trust in your best friend as well as parent evinced in that hasty step must have wounded her loving heart. Nor do I wish--that is to say, your mother herself requests me not to bear hardly upon you with respect to your gambling debts. You know the full extent of them perhaps--yes, I was afraid of that--better than she does even yet; but she has paid enough of them already to seriously embarrass her own affairs.” “I have made a solemn promise never to bet or gamble more, Dr Haldane,” said the captain hoarsely.