Her son ate no more breakfast. He was beginning to realize, as he had not before, that he was in a certain sense a corpse, which this decorous and exquisitely refined family could not bury, but would hide as far as possible.
"You then expect me to go with you to Europe?" he said.
"Certainly. We could not go without a gentleman."
"That I scarcely am now, mother, in your estimation or in society's. I think you could get on better without me."
"Now, Egbert, be sensible."
"What am I to do in this secluded European watering-place, where there are no Americans, and at which we are to sojourn indefinitely?"
"I am sure I have not thought. Your sisters, at least, can venture out and get a breath of fresh air. It is time you thought of them rather than of yourself. You could amuse yourself with the natives, or by fishing and hunting."
"Mother!" he exclaimed, impetuously, "I no longer desire to merely amuse myself. I wish to become a man, in the best sense of the word."
Mrs. Haldane evidently experienced a disagreeable nervous shock at the sudden intensity of his manner, but she said, with rebuking quietness: "I am sure I wish you to become such a man, thoroughly well bred, and thoroughly under self-control. It is my purpose to enable you to appear like a perfect gentleman from this time forward, and I expect that you will be one."
"What will I be but a well-dressed nonentity? what will I be but a coward, seeking to get away as far as possible from the place of my defeat, and to hide from its consequences?" he answered, with sharp, bitter emphasis.
"Egbert, your tendency to exaggeration and violent speech is more than I can bear in my weak, nervous condition. When you have thought this matter over calmly, and have realized how I and your sisters feel, you will see that we are right--that is, if Dr. Marks is correct, and you do really wish to atone for the past as far as it now can be done."
The young man paced restlessly up and down the room in an agitated manner, which greatly disquieted his mother and sisters.
"Can you not realize," he at last burst out, "that I, also, have a conscience? that I am no longer a child? and that I cannot see things as you do?"
"Egbert," exclaimed his elder sister, lifting her hand deprecatingly, "we are not deaf."
"If you will only follow your conscience," continued Mrs. Haldane, in her low monotone, "all will be well. It is your being carried away by gusts of impulse and violent passions that makes all the trouble. If you had followed your conscience you would at once have left Hillaton at my request, and hidden yourself in the seclusion that I indicated. If you had done so, you might have saved yourself and us from all that has since occurred."