Then there was his mother.

An unutterable reverential pathos always to him encircled the idea of his mother.

Her life to him seemed a hard one.

From the outside, as he viewed it, it was all self-sacrifice and renunciation.
Yet he knew that she had set her heart on an education for him, as much as it could be set on anything earthly.

He was her pride, her hope; and just now that very thought was full of bitterness.