‘That’s right, old fellow! Put it as spitefully as you can. If you like, it _was_ a charity-school--and a poor coarse inadequate place too, not the place for you. When I think of _you_ there, it is horrible; I simply took the place of the authorities of that school towards you. They had nothing to bind them to you; no single tie existed. _I_ had everything. I had been your mother’s intimate friend; she gave me, in her goodness, that which no service of mine could repay. I reverenced her in her lifetime, and I reverence her memory now. She knew what I wished; I discussed it with her fully and freely, and she gave her unqualified consent. She trusted you to me--gave you to me. Have you any right to impute wrong motives to her memory? You remember her perfectly well. You know what she was. You must know that she never acted but as she thought, from right and pure motives.’ ‘I know; that alters it. But all the same it is very hard.’ ‘I feel it so,’ said Sebastian. ‘Year by year I have been more glad that I had you as my firm and faithful friend, who would never desert me, whatever any one else did. I firmly believed that it was so, and you--you have so little regard for me, that you would leave me--quit me here at an hour’s notice, and why? Because you cannot, or will not, rise above a few miserable, material interests; because you let a few paltry, sordid coins (that is what it comes to) raise themselves between you and me, and make them into a wall which neither of us can pass. Yet you told me the other night that you _could_ not be fickle--to me. Which am I to believe--your words or your actions?’ ‘You may believe both now, when I tell you that I will do what you please. Shall I stay? I will do whatever you like--just whatever you like,’ said Hugo, in a dull, toneless kind of voice. ‘You call that doing what I please--remaining though you hate it. I thought--last night I was sure that it would have caused you pain to leave me.’ ‘It will--would, I mean, cause me agony; but what am I to think, when you have told Mrs. Mallory, who hates me, my whole story, and kept it from me, whom you say you love?’ ‘There I was wrong, Hugo--utterly wrong, I own it Had I known--but I must not say that. If I had it to do now, I should keep silence. But if you will not allow me _one_ mistake, take your own way. Leave me alone. My mother opposes my wishes bitterly. The girl I love won’t have a word to say to me. I have no one left but Hugo von Birkenau--and he begs to decline my acquaintance. So be it!’ He turned to leave the room. His hand was on the door-handle, when Hugo overtook him. ‘Stop!’ said he, almost in a whisper. ‘You know me better than I know myself. I cannot leave you thus. If I thought I was of any good to you----’ ‘I suppose I should go through all this, to keep a thing I didn’t care for. That is so like me!’ observed Sebastian. ‘Yes,’ said Hugo, with a half-laugh, half-choke, or sob; ‘I never thought of that.’