Mrs. Jarvis’s heart overflowed with motherly gratitude, for she idolized her boy; but she was not ‘scholard’ enough to let it trickle from her heart down her arm into a pen and or to paper; and so from time to time she got the leading man (who had seen better days, and taught virtue in a national school before he took to delineating villainy on the boards) to write in reply to Shakspeare, and in every letter there was always a mother’s blessing for Mrs. Smith, the kind lodger. Thus far had events progressed, and thus they stood on the day when this chapter opens, and we see Mrs. Smith at her work, and Shakspeare, who is still weak from his long illness, lying on the sofa. Mrs. Smith bends over her work and stitches away; and after Shakspeare has read his mother’s letter aloud, and then read it to himself, there is a short silence. Shakspeare folds the letter and puts it away carefully again. ‘You like reading letters over again and again, don’t you?’ he says presently. Mrs. Smith starts. ‘Why, what do you mean?’ she says hesitatingly. ‘When I was ill and you thought I was asleep, I often used to see you take letters from your pocket and read them again and again. Were they from your husband, who is abroad?’ The question was put in innocent boyish curiosity, but Mrs. Smith flushed scarlet and turned her head away so that the lad might not notice her confusion. ‘Yes,’ she answered, after a pause; ‘they were from my husband.’ ‘When is he coming home?’ ‘I—I don’t know. Soon, I hope,’ stammered Mrs. Smith. ‘I hope I shall see him. I’m sure he must be a good fellow, or you wouldn’t kiss his letters like you do.’ Shakspeare Jarvis little knew the tender chord he had touched. Mrs. Smith bent over her work, and the tears trickled down her face. She was thinking of her absent husband. She had visited him from time to time as the regulations allowed, and the meetings had been painful to them both. She had cheered him and bidden him hope. One visiting-day she had been too ill to go, and had written, telling him; the next she had gone—had gone at a time when the expense of her journey had crippled her—and had been told that she could not see him. Her husband had committed some offence against prison regulations, and his punishment was ‘no visitors, no letters.’ Since then she had not heard from him, and now she was getting anxious and nervous again. Every day that passed and she received no news, she grew more and more distressed. She knew his impetuous nature, she had seen how terribly he had been tried by the prison discipline, and she dreaded to think what he might have done in a fit of rage or despair. She believed him innocent. He had told her all—all that he knew, and she believed him. He was still her noble, handsome George. It was all a vile plot against him; but what could she, a poor, weak, destitute woman, do to prove it?