"No, I must say good evening," said Will, dashing up a passage which
led into Lowick Gate, and almost running to get out of Raffles's reach.
He walked a long while on the Lowick road away from the town, glad of
the starlit darkness when it came. He felt as if he had had dirt cast
on him amidst shouts of scorn. There was this to confirm the fellow's
statement--that his mother never would tell him the reason why she had
run away from her family.
Well! what was he, Will Ladislaw, the worse, supposing the truth about
that family to be the ugliest? His mother had braved hardship in order
to separate herself from it. But if Dorothea's friends had known this
story--if the Chettams had known it--they would have had a fine color
to give their suspicions a welcome ground for thinking him unfit to
come near her. However, let them suspect what they pleased, they would
find themselves in the wrong. They would find out that the blood in
his veins was as free from the taint of meanness as theirs.