Hubert, with no understanding for the craggy facts of life, inwardly rebelled against the whole situation.

He felt that it laid him open to ridicule, the mere suspicion of which always stung him to the quick.

When, therefore, he declared to his mother, in the painful interview on his return to Wanley, that it was almost a relief to him to have lost the inheritance, he spoke with perfect truth.
Amid the tempest which had fallen on his life there rose in that moment the semblance of a star of hope.

The hateful conditions which had weighed upon his future being finally cast off, might he not look forward to some nobler activity than had hitherto seemed possible?
Was he not being saved from his meaner self, that part of his nature which tended to conventional ideals, which was subject to empty pride and ignoble apprehensions?
Had he gone through the storm without companion, hope might have overcome every weakness, but sympathy with his mother's deep distress troubled his self-control.

At her feet he yielded to the emotions of childhood, and his misery increased until bodily suffering brought him the relief of unconsciousness.
To his mother perhaps he owed that strain of idealism which gave his character its significance.