‘Your guardian! That is about all he has to guard, I think.’ ‘He is my guardian, and the guardian of my property, however small it may be. I dare say, to you, I may seem almost a beggar, but Sebastian----’ ‘You make me pity you! I do not think it right that you should live under such a delusion any longer. Let me tell you that you have no property except what my son gives you. You live on his bounty. But for him you would be a beggar.’ ‘You are not speaking the truth!’ said Hugo, suddenly standing before her and bending his flashing eyes upon her. ‘You know you are not speaking the truth.’ ‘Where is it now, the glory and the dream?’ ‘Am I not? You had better ask Sebastian. It was he who told me. I thought you considered him perfect in all respects--not being his mother.’ ‘Sebastian told you that I lived on him--that he----’ ‘That your mother committed you to his charge, and he took it into his head to adopt you. That, except what he gives you, you have _nothing_. He told me that, and I think it best that you should know it, for I consider your behaviour and conversation very unfit for your position. That is all that I have to say, or want to hear, upon the subject.’ Mrs. Mallory’s moral equilibrium was almost restored; she felt distinctly more cheerful and better satisfied with everything. For Hugo there remained only a hideous chaos, a general _bouleversement_ of his fixed, contented conceptions of life and his sphere in it. He walked out of the room, and stood in the hall a moment. What should he do--whither go? This was no place for him. He had no right here. He was the object of a rich man’s pitying charity--a beggar. Mrs. Mallory had said it, and said it after a fashion which left no doubt possible. Instead of playing a grand piano in a luxurious drawing-room, instead of going to balls and dancing with beautiful young women of large fortune, and driving about, and riding fine horses--all belonging to another man--instead of this, he ought to be--what? Well, if Sebastian had left him at the institution where he was being brought up, the authorities would at least have found him a trade and apprenticed him to it: he might have been at this moment a shopman or an usher, or a clerk, or somebody’s secretary and amanuensis. At least, he would not have been anybody’s dependent, loaded with so many obligations that their weight crushed and overpowered him.