Mrs.Woolstan devoted herself to her child, until, when Leonard was nine, she entrusted him to a tutor very highly spoken of by friends of hers, a young Oxford man, capable not only of instructing the boy in the most efficient way, but of training whatever force and originality his character might possess.

She paid a hundred and fifty pounds a year for these invaluable services--in itself not a large stipend, but large in proportion to her income.

And Iris had never grudged the expenditure, for in Dyce Lashmar she found, not merely a tutor for her son, but a director of her own mind and conscience.

Under Dyce's influence she had read or tried to read--many instructive books; he had fostered, guided, elevated her native enthusiasm; he had emancipated her soul.

These, at all events, were the terms in which Iris herself was wont to describe the results of their friendship, and she was eminently a sincere woman, ever striving to rise above the weakness, the disingenuousness, of her sex.
"If you knew how it pains me!" she murmured, stealing a glance at Lashmar.