“This is what it is to be poor,” Mrs Russell said. “Oh, I ought to thank you for it, that among other things, I never would have known all the bitterness of being poor but for this; and yet I never held out my hand to ask anything,” she cried, beginning to weep. “I never thrust my poverty on anybody. I did all I could to keep up--a good appearance; and to hope--” here the sobs burst forth again beyond restraint--“for better days.” “What is the matter?” said Bertie pushing open the door. He was carelessly dressed in an old coat, his hair in disorder, his feet in slippers, he who had always decorated himself so carefully for Lucy’s eyes. He did not take the trouble to open the door with his hand, but pushed it rudely with his person, and gave Lucy a sullen nod and good-morning. “What are you making such a row about, mother?” he said. “Oh, Bertie, Miss Trevor has come--to offer me charity!” she cried, “charity! She sees we are poor, and, because she is rich, she thinks she can treat me, me! like a beggar in the street, and offer me money, Oh, Bertie! Bertie! my boy!” the poor woman threw her arm round him, and began to sob on his shoulder, “what has your poor mother done that she should be humbled like this?” “Charity!” he said; then looked at Lucy with an insolent laugh that brought the color to the girl’s face; “it is, perhaps, conscience money,” he cried. Then putting his mother away from him “Go and lie down, mamma, you have had excitement enough this morning. We are not beggars, whatever Miss Trevor may think.” Bertie’s eyes were red, too; he was still at the age when tears, though the man is ashamed of them, are not far from the eyes when trouble comes. “Naturally,” he said, “we all stand upon what we have got, and money is what you have got, Miss Trevor. Oh, it is a very good thing, it saves you from many annoyances. We have not very much of it, but we can do without charity.” His lip quivered, his heart was sore, and his pride cut to pieces. “Money is not everything, though, perhaps, _you_ may be excused for thinking so,” he said. He wanted to retaliate on some one; the smarting of his eyelids, the quiver which he could not keep from his lips, the wounds of his pride still bleeding and fresh, all filled him with a kind of blind fury and desire to make some one else suffer. He would have liked to tear his Angel of Hope to pieces in the misery of his disappointment. Was it not her fault? As for Lucy, she stood like a culprit before the mother and the son, looking at them with a pathetic protest in her eyes, like that with which an innocent dumb creature appeals against fate. She was as much surprised by all this storm of denunciation as a lamb is by the blow that ends its life. When they were silent, and it was time for her to speak, she opened her lips and drew a long troubled breath, but she could say nothing for herself. What was there to say? She was too much astonished even for indignation.