“Selfishness!  I know what you are going to say—­here is my answer.  I assure you I administer to the best of my ability the fortune God gave me—­I spare myself no trouble.  I know the financial position of every farmer on my estate, the property does not owe fifty pounds;—­I keep the tenants up to the mark; I do not approve of waste and idleness, but when a little help is wanted I am ready to give it.  And then, well, I don’t mind telling you, but it must not go any further.  I have made a will leaving something to all my tenants; I give away a fixed amount in charity yearly.”

“I know, my dear John, I know your life is not a dissolute one; but your mother is very anxious, remember you are the last.  Is there no chance of your ever marrying?”

“I don’t think I could live with a woman; there is something very degrading, something very gross in such relations.  There is a better and a purer life to lead ... an inner life, coloured and permeated with feelings and tones that are, oh, how intensely our own, and he who may have this life, shrinks from any adventitious presence that might jar or destroy it.  To keep oneself unspotted, to feel conscious of no sense of stain, to know, yes, to hear the heart repeat that this self—­hands, face, mouth and skin—­is free from all befouling touch, is all one’s own.  I have always been strongly attracted to the colour white, and I can so well and so acutely understand the legend that tells that the ermine dies of gentle loathing of its own self, should a stain come upon its immaculate fur....  I should not say a legend, for that implies that the story is untrue, and it is not untrue—­so beautiful a thought could not be untrue.”

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 1:  Qui Romam regis.]

CHAPTER III.

“Urns on corner walls, pilasters, circular windows, flowerage and loggia.  What horrible taste, and quite out of keeping with the landscape!” He rang the bell.

“How do you do, Master John!” cried the tottering old butler who had known him since babyhood.  “Very glad, indeed, we all are to see you home again, sir!”

Neither the appellation of Master John, nor the sight of the four paintings, Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter, which decorated the walls of the passage, found favour with John, and the effusiveness of Mrs Norton, who rushed out of the drawing-room, followed by Kitty, and embraced her son, at once set on edge all his curious antipathies.  Why this kissing, this approachment of flesh?  Of course she was his mother....  Then this smiling girl in the background!  He would have to amuse her and talk to her; what infinite boredom it would be!  He trusted fervently that her visit would not be a long one.

Then through what seemed to him the pollution of triumph, he was led into the library; and he noticed, notwithstanding the presiding busts of Shakespeare and Milton, that there was but one wretched stand full of books in the room, and that in the gloom of a far corner.  His mother sat down, and there was a resoluteness in her look and attitude that seemed to proclaim, “Now I hold you captive;” but she said: