‘The rector has always been very kind to me. Oh, yes, I know that’s a different thing altogether. It is not like giving me---- Mrs. Egerton, I think I had better go away, for what is the use of talking. He is my father, it is true. It is my business to put up with it, to bear it--to bear everything that follows from it--but it is hard. You can’t say but what it is hard.’ ‘Oh, Jack, my poor boy! She took his hand in both of hers, and, that not being enough, bent forward and kissed him in the anguish of her sympathy. ‘But what can I say to you? I can’t deceive you. I know they will never, never consent.’ John went away, not knowing where he went, as if he were following his own funeral. He felt like that, he said to himself, sadly--the funeral of all his hopes. He had his work, but what would that be, what could it matter if he made his fortune, without Elly? And then he went on reflecting, as many a man has done before him, on the spite of fate. If this had all happened before he went to Edgeley, how much less would the misery have been! It would have been bad enough, but he could have thrown it off, and perhaps in time have forgotten it: for then Elly was but a light of his childhood faint and far-off, and had not become a necessity of his life. Why was he permitted to go and see her again, to discover all that she was to him, only to lose her for ever? For Elly had been right in what she had said in her indignation, ‘A girl’s own mind is nothing.’ Even John, though he had perfect trust in her, though for a moment he had been carried away by the flash of her resolution and certainty, did not take much comfort now from Elly’s pledge. She did not understand (how should she?) what thing it was that so lightly, so easily, she made up her mind to take upon herself. Poor John put that aside in the deep despondency that overwhelmed him. And, when his mind recurred to his momentary triumph of the morning, it but added a pang the more. To think that this success had secured the only thing that had been needed a little while ago; and, now he had got it, it was nothing. He went slowly, slowly away, following (he said to himself again) his own funeral, not able to hold up his head. CHAPTER XVIII. A SUSPENDED SOLUTION. It seemed to matter very little to John that Mr. Cattley met him in the evening with what he thought good news. In the absence of anything better, it was good news. May had been very amiable, as was the manner of that hopeless but good-humoured and philosophical unfortunate. He declared that nothing on earth would induce him to injure his children by attaching himself to them: he had come back to John’s room only to return those papers which he had taken with the intention of disposing of them on his son’s account, meaning no harm. He had never meant any harm. He had intended, perhaps, to secure to himself a share of the profit, but never to harm the boy. ‘Though he’s sadly changed, if ever he was my little chap,’ he said.