‘Oh! Susie,’ she cried, ‘I knew how it would be. He is your father all over. All his ways are _his_ ways. I thought he was safe down in the quiet country with the old people. If they had lived, I should never have wished him to know anything of you or me. What can we do for him? We can’t even have him in the house with us. Oh, how foolish I was to bring him to London! I might have paid some one down there to take care of him--to keep him out of evil.’ ‘Mother, you know that could not be. Don’t you remember how many talks we used to have about it? You can’t keep a boy of his age so. He is almost a man; and, mother, he looks like a man sometimes: when he rose up in indignation against me, because I--because I----’ ‘You thought so too? Don’t conceal it from me, Susie. You saw him come in--with all this story about an accident--the very first night. I knew it was in him, his father’s son: and my poor father and mother with all their innocent tales about him; how good he was; never a suspicion, not a weakness of any kind. Oh, why did they die? Why did I bring him away from the country? And why, why is it permitted that this poison should come into a young boy’s veins, from a father he scarcely knew!’ ‘Oh, mother, wait till you see; don’t condemn him unheard.’ ‘Condemn him! Would I condemn him? My heart bleeds for him, Susie; but I see all the tortures that are in store for us: and for him it would have been better if he never had been born. For what can we do for him, you and I?’ ‘Oh, mother, it is not so bad as that; it may never be so bad!’ Susie said, with tears.