Had she loved him enough?
Had she so far fulfilled the trust her dead husband had imposed upon her?
Would her boy love her in the new life as he had loved her in the old?
And would her poor craving heart bear to see him absorbed by fresh interests and passions, in which her share could be only, at the best, secondary and indirect?
One day--it was on the afternoon preceding the examination--she gave hurried, half-laughing utterance to some of these misgivings of hers.
They were walking down the Lime-walk of Trinity Gardens: beneath their feet a yellow fresh-strewn carpet of leaves, brown interlacing branches overhead, and a red misty sun shining through the trunks.

Robert understood his mother perfectly, and the way she had of hiding a storm of feeling under these tremulous comedy airs.

So that, instead of laughing too, he took her hand and, there being no spectators anywhere to be seen in the damp November garden, he raised it to his lips with a few broken words of affection and gratitude which very nearly overcame the self-command of both of them.

She crashed wildly into another subject, and then suddenly it occurred to her impulsive mind that the moment had come to make him acquainted with those dying intentions of his great-uncle which we have already described.

The diversion was a welcome one, and the duty seemed clear.