“Oh my Harry! my Harry!” she cried. “To take him from my very bosom! He will never love me again! God _shall_ know what I think of it! No mother could but hate him if he served her so!” “Apparently you don't want the boy back in your bosom again!” “None of your fooling of me now!” she answered, drawing herself up, and drying her eyes. “I can stand a good deal, but I won't stand that! What's gone is gone! He's dead, and the dead lie in no bosom but that of the grave! They go, and return never more!” “But you will die too!” “What do you mean by that? You _will_ be talking! As if I didn't know I'd got to die, one day or another! What's that to me and Harry!” “Then you think we're all going to cease and go out, like the clouds that are carried away and broken up by the wind?” “I know nothing about it, and I don't care. Nothing's anything to me but Harry, and I shall never see my Harry again!--Heaven! Bah! What's heaven without Harry!” “Nothing, of course! But don't you ever think of seeing him again?” “What's the use! It's all a mockery! Where's the good of meeting when we shan't be human beings any more? If we're nothing but ghosts--if he's never to know me--if I'm never to feel him in my arms--ugh! it's all humbug! If he ever meant to give me back my Harry, why did he take him from me? If he didn't mean me to rage at losing him, why did he give him to me?” “He gave you his brother at the same time, and you refused to love him: what if he took the one away until you should have learned to love the other?” “I can't love him; I won't love him! He has his father to love him! He don't want my love! I haven't got it to give him! Harry took it with him! I hate Peter!--What are you doing there--laughing in your sleeve? Did you never see a woman cry?” “I've seen many a woman cry, but never without my heart crying with her. You come to my church, and behave so badly I can scarce keep from crying for you. It half choked me last Sunday, to see you lying there with that horrid book in your hand, and the words of Christ in your ears!” “I didn't heed them. It wasn't a horrid book!” “It _was_ a horrid book. You left it behind you, and I took it with me. I laid it on my study-table, and went out again. When I came home to dinner, my wife brought it to me and said, 'Oh, Tom, how can you read such books?' 'My dear,' I answered, 'I don't know what is in the book; I haven't read a word of it.'” “And then you told her where you found it?” “I did not.” “What did you do with it?” “I said to her, 'If it's a bad book, here goes!' and threw it in the fire.” “Then I'm not to know the end of the story! But I can send to London for another copy! I'm much obliged to you, Mr. Wingfold, for destroying my property!--But you didn't tell her where you found it?” “I did not. She never asked me.” Mrs. Wylder was silent. She seemed a little ashamed, perhaps a little softened. Wingfold bade her good-morning. She did not answer him.