"But I would have lost my self-respect. I should have done worse--"
"Self-respect!" interrupted his mother, with an expression akin to disgust flitting across her pale face. "How can you use that word after what has happened, and especially now that you are working among those vulgar factory people, and living with that profane old creature who goes by the name of 'Jerry Growler.' To think that you, who bear your father's name, should have fallen so low! The daily and hourly mortification of thinking of all this, here, where for so many years there was not a speck upon our family reputation, is more than flesh and blood can endure. Our only course now is to go away where we are not known. Our best hope is to make you appear like what your father meant you should be, and try to forget that you have been anything else; and if you have any sense of obligation to us left you will do what you can to carry out our efforts. Dr. Marks thinks you have met with 'a change of heart.' I am sure yon can prove it in no better way than by a docile acquiescence in the wishes of one who has a natural right to control you, and whose teachings," she added complacently, "had they been followed, would have enabled you to hold up your head to-day among the proudest in the land."
Haldane buried his face in his hands, and fairly groaned, in his disappointment and sense of humiliation.
"Is it possible," asked one of his sisters "that you thought that we could all go out to church to-day as usual, and commence life to-morrow where he left off when you first went away from home?"
"I expected nothing of the kind," said her brother, lifting up a face that was pale from suppressed feeling; "the fact is, I have thought little about all this that is uppermost in your minds. I have been all through the phase of shrinking from the world's word and touch, as if my whole being were a diseased nerve. While in that condition I suffered enough, God knows; but even in the police court I was not made to feel more thoroughly that I was a disgraced criminal than I have been here, in my childhood's home. Perhaps you can't help your feeling; but the result is all the same. Through the influence of a woman who belongs to heaven rather than earth, I was led to forget the world and all about it; I was led to wish to form a good character for its own sake. I wanted to be rid of the debasing vices of my nature which she had made me hate, and which would separate me from such as she is. I wanted your forgiveness, mother. More than all, I wanted God's forgiveness, and that great change in my nature which he alone can bestow. I felt that Dr. Marks could help me, because I believed in him; and he did carry me, as it were, to the very gate of heaven. I expected, at least, a little sympathy from you all, and a God-speed as I went back to my work tomorrow. I even hoped that you might take me by the hand, and say to those who knew us here, 'My son was lost, but is found. He wishes to live a manly, Christian life, and all who are Christians should help him.' I find, on the contrary, that Christ and his words are forgotten; that I am regarded as a hideous and deformed creature, that must be disguised as far as possible, and spirited off to some remote corner of the earth, and there virtually buried alive. Thus different are the teachings of the Bible and the teachings of the world. I thought I could not endure my hard lot at Hillaton any longer, but I shall go back to it quite content."