‘For Helena _is_ in love with him, let her pretend what she likes,’ she muttered angrily. ‘I can see it distinctly. He might have her for the asking.... I wonder if all children are born to break their mothers’ hearts?’ With which speculation agitating her brain she retired to rest. Her spirit was still ruffled and ill at ease all the next day, and by degrees she concentrated her ill-temper upon a single object--a sort of focus to her anger and vexation--and that object was no other than Hugo von Birkenau. She had always regarded him with little favour: he was poor, dependent, and behaved himself as if he were rich and free. Now, everything that he said or did appeared an offence--a purposely intended, premeditated insult directed at herself, with the purpose of angering her--a very strange frame of mind, dear reader, and one which, from its being so utterly unknown to you and me and eminently reasonable persons like ourselves, would almost seem to require some elucidation or description. Mrs. Mallory found the day go over, and Hugo continue to be insultingly cheerful and conversational, without her being able to find any actual ground for quarrelling with him. It would come, she was determined; it should come: he was too impertinent to be tolerated without an attempt to repress him. On the evening on which Myles came to see Sebastian, the latter and Hugo were sitting together in Sebastian’s study. Hugo had heard of Adrienne’s refusal, and though condoling, did not feel so sorry as he considered he ought to have done. By degrees the conversation drifted off to Hugo’s own affairs and prospects. Sebastian told him he thought he ought seriously to think about what he meant to do. ‘I have thought about it, and decided,’ said Hugo. ‘I’m going to write an opera. That has been my ambition ever since I could strum upon a piano.’ ‘But, my dear lad, you will never learn all that you must know in order to write an opera by staying in Thanshope. You must go away, Hugo, to your native land, where alone true music flourishes, and you must study. You ought to go to Köln or Leipzig or some other conservatorium. I should recommend Leipzig.’ ‘I have always thought of Leipzig,’ answered the boy, ‘and I will go as soon as you like, Sebastian, but it will be very dreary without you.’ ‘Oh, bah! Yours is a fickle, artist nature, Hugo, revelling in the delight of the moment. You will think Leipzig heaven a week after you get there, and all the other pupils in the conservatorium seraphs and angels, and you will wonder how you ever lived here.’ ‘Not fickle, Sebastian!’ he cried, with the tragic earnest which sometimes made Sebastian think him so like Helena Spenceley. ‘Anything but that! Anything but fickle to you! If I thought I ever _could_ be fickle to you, I’d put an end to myself to-night, and have no qualms of conscience about it. Such a wretch would be better out of the world than in it.’