In vain for some time Marryott questioned him, as to what had happened to occasion his sudden return, and the discomposure under which he appeared to labour. But at length, having shaken off the hand she so caressingly placed on his shoulder (for some years the young man had begun to discourage any similar demonstrations from his quondam nurse), he called for some wine; and having drank off a bumper, he then came out with the abrupt communication, that he had lost a thousand pounds, and that she must manage to get it from his father.
"Lost a thousand pounds!" Mr. Trevor to be informed of this, and coolly asked to supply it. The boy was mad to think of such a thing. No favouritism would indeed avail to cover such an enormity in his father's eyes. She, with all her confidence in the influence she possessed, would not risk the office of intercession in such an outrageous instance, at such a time too, when Mr. Trevor was overlooking the accounts of his brother Eustace, who had just returned from College, and into a fine state of mind she assured him his father was worked up by the employment. Then, in anticipation of the paternal indignation she prepared him to receive, Mrs. Marryott ventured to bestow upon her foster-son some severe strictures upon the imprudence of his conduct, all which Job's comfort the young man was in no mood to receive with patient equanimity.
Starting from his seat, he rudely told her to hold her tongue, for if she did not choose to help him he must go to some one who would; and rushing up stairs, he went straight to his mother's sitting-room. Mrs. Trevor was alone, seated near the open window, with her eyes fixed sadly on the church spire rising amidst the distant trees, and pointing with such solemn silence to that blessed home, for which the wounded spirit must have so often yearned.
"Eugene!" she exclaimed in surprise, as, turning her sorrowful countenance towards the opening door, she beheld her son; and Eugene having slightly returned the pressure of her outstretched hand, threw himself down upon the nearest seat, in much the same state of moody dejection as he had previously done in the apartment of Marryott.
But there seemed something more soothing in the atmosphere of his present position--something in the subdued and holy calm of the maternal presence, which had never before impressed him in the like degree.