Mrs. Andinnian came back to her seat and replied calmly. "If you could help me in any way, Karl, you should hear it. But you cannot--you cannot, that I can see. Man is born to trouble, you know, as the sparks fly upwards." "I thought that _I_ had offended you: at least, pained you by my coming marriage. It grieved me very much." "My trouble is my own," she answered. Karl could not imagine what it could be. He tried to think of various causes--just as we all do in a similar case--and rejected them again. She had always been a strangely independent, secretive woman: and such women, given to act with the daring independence of man, but possessing not man's freedom of power, may at times drift into troubled seas. Karl greatly feared it must be something of this kind. Debt? Well, he did _not_ think it could be debt. He had never known of any outlets of expense: and surely, if this were so, his mother would apply to him to release her. But, still the idea kept coming back again: for he felt sure she had not given the true reason for wishing to keep him away from Foxwood, and he could not think of any other trouble. Sunk in these thoughts, he happened to raise his glance and caught his mother's sharp eyes inquisitively fixed on him. "What are you deliberating upon, Karl?" "I was wondering what your care could be." "Better not wonder. _You_ could not help me. Had my brave Adam been alive, I might have told him. He was daring, Karl; you are not." "Not daring, mother? I? I think I am sufficiently so. At any rate, I could be as daring as the best in your interests." "Perhaps you might. But it would not serve me, you see. And sympathy--the sympathy that my poor lost Adam gave me--I have never from you sought or wished for." She was plain at any rate. Karl felt the stab, just as he had felt many other of her stabs during his life. Mrs. Andinnian shook off her secret thoughts with a kind of shiver; and, to banish them, began talking with Karl of ordinary things. "What has become of Ann Hopley?" he enquired. "She was much attached to you: I thought perhaps you might have kept her on." "Ann Hopley?--oh, the servant I had at Weymouth. No, I did not keep her on, Karl. She had a husband, you know." At ten o'clock Mrs. Andinnian wished him goodnight and good-bye, and retired. Karl sat on, thinking and wondering. He was sorry she did not place confidence in him, and so give him a chance of helping her: but she never had, and he supposed she never would. At times--and this was one--it had almost seemed to Karl as though she could not be his mother. CHAPTER X. Mrs. Andinnian's Secret. "Will you take anything, Sir Karl?" The question came from Hewitt, who had looked in to ask for orders for the morning, arousing his master from a curious train of thought. "I don't mind a drop of hot brandy and water, Hewitt. Half a glass. Something or other seems to have given me the shivers. Is it a cold night?"