Mrs. Dobbs looked at him gravely, but with no trace of anger. "Look here," she said when he paused, apparently from want of breath--"you may as well know it first as last--May is engaged to be married; has been engaged more than three months." Theodore gave a kind of gasp, and turned of so ghastly a pallor that Mrs. Dobbs, without another word, went to a closet in the room, unlocked it, took out a decanter with some sherry in it, poured out a brimming glassful of the wine, and, placing one hand behind the young man's head, put the glass to his lips with the other. He made a feeble movement to reject it. "Off with it!" she said in the voice of a nurse talking to a refractory child. He swallowed the sherry without further resistance, and a tinge of colour began to return to his face. "You haven't got too much strength," observed Mrs. Dobbs, as she stood and watched him. "Your mother was delicate, and I suppose you take after her." She had no intention, no consciousness, of doing so, but, in speaking thus, she touched a sensitive chord. Any allusion to his mother's feeble constitution made him nervous. He closed his eyes, and murmured that he feared he had caught a chill at the funeral; that the sensation of shivering pointed to that. Mrs. Dobbs stood looking down on him as he sat with his head thrown back in the chair. "And so, my lad, you think I hate you?" she said. "Why, I should be sorry to be obliged to hate your father's son; or, for that matter, your mother's son either. She was a good, quiet, peaceable sort of young woman. I remember her well, and your grandfather, old Rabbitt, that kept the Castlecombe Arms when I was young. No; I don't hate you. Not a bit! But I'll tell you what I do hate; I hate to see young creatures, that ought by rights to be generous, and trusting, and affectionate, and maybe a little bit foolish--there's a kind of foolishness that's better than over-wisdom in the young--I hate to see 'em setting themselves up, valuing themselves on their 'cuteness; ashamed of them that have gone before 'em. I hate to see 'em hard-hearted to the helpless. Young things may be cruel from thoughtlessness; but, to be cruel out of meanness--well, I'll own I do hate that. But as for you, it comes into my head that perhaps I've been a bit too hard on you." Mrs. Dobbs here laid her broad hand on his shoulder. He would fain have shaken it off. But, although the wine had greatly restored him, he thought it prudent to remain quiet, and recover himself completely before going away.