“The thing that would please me best would be what was the best for you,” she said, with self-restraint. She was a little wounded by his inquiries, but even now had not penetrated his meaning. He wanted more distinct information than he had got. Her gentle ease of living, her readiness to supply his wants, to forestall them even--the luxury, as it seemed to him after his wild and wandering career, of the long-settled house, the carefully kept gardens, the little carriage, all the modest abundance of the humble establishment, had surprised him. He had believed that his mother was all but poor--not in want of anything essential to comfort, but yet very careful about her expenditure, and certainly not allowing him in the days of his youth, as he had often reflected with bitterness, the indulgences to which, if she had been as well off as she seemed now, he would have had, he thought, a right. What had she now? Had she grown rich? Was there plenty for him after her, enough to exempt him from that necessity of working, which he had always feared and hated? It was, perhaps, not unreasonable that he should wish to know. “I told you,” he said, after a short interval, “that I was good for nothing. If I had stayed at home, what should I have been now? A Writer to the Signet with an office in Edinburgh, and, perhaps, who can tell, clients that would have come to consult me about where to place their money and other such things.” He laughed at the thought. “I can never be that now.” “No,” she said, in tender sympathy with what she was quick to think a regret on his part. “No, Robbie, my dear; I fear it’s too late for that now.” “Well! it’s perhaps all the better: for how could I tell them what to do with their money, who never had any of my own? No; what I shall do is this: be a dependent on you, mother, all my life; with a few pounds to buy my clothes, and a few shillings to get my tobacco and a daily paper, now that the ‘Scotsman’ comes out daily--and some wretched old library of novels, where I can change my books three or four times a-week: and that’s how Rob Ogilvy will end, that was once a terror in his way--no, it was never I that was the terror, but those I was with,” he added, in an undertone. Mrs Ogilvy’s heart was wrung with that keen anguish of helplessness which is as the bitterness of death to those who can do nothing to help or deliver those they love. “Oh, my dear, my dear,” she said, “why should that be so? It is all yours whatever is mine. It’s not a fortune, but you shall be no dependent--you shall have your own: and better thoughts will come--and you will want more than a library of foolish books or a daily paper. You will want your own honest life, like them that went before you, and your place in the world--and oh, Robbie! God grant it! a good wife and a family of your own.”