CHAPTER IX.
ESAU.
"To be weak is miserable, Doing or suffering." "Now conscience wakes despair That slumberd; wakes the bitter memory Of what he was, what is, and what must be." It was the middle of February before Harry could leave Sandal-Side.

He had remained there, however, only out of that deference to public opinion which no one likes to offend; and it had been a most melancholy and anxious delay.

He was not allowed to enter the squire's room, and indeed he shrank from the ordeal.

His mother and Charlotte treated him with a reserve he felt to be almost dislike.

He had been so accustomed to consider mother-love sufficient to cover all faults, that he forgot there was a stronger tie; forgot that to the tender wife the husband of her youth--her lover, friend, companion--is far nearer and dearer than the tie that binds her to sons and daughters.
Also, he did not care to give any consideration to the fact, that both his mother and Charlotte resented the kind of daughter and sister he had forced upon them.