“To be sure I will.  What a thoughtless fellow I have been!  But—­but—­I fancied you would have asked me if you wanted it.  Never mind, you’ll get it all in a lump.  Let me see—­how much will it come to?  You are the best head going for arithmetic, Aunt Hilary.  Do reckon it all up?” She did so; and the sum total made Ascott open his eyes wide.

“Upon my soul I had no idea it was so much.  I’m very sorry, but I seem fairly cleaned out this quarter—­only a few sovereigns left to keep the mill going.  You shall have them, or half of them, and I’ll owe you the rest.  Here!”

He emptied on the table, without counting, four or five pounds.  Hilary took two, asking him gravely “If he was sure he could spare so much?  She did not wish to inconvenience him.”

“Oh, not at all; and I wouldn’t mind if it did; you have been good aunts to me.”

He kissed her, with a sudden fit of compunction, and bade her good-night, looking as if he did not care to be “bothered” any more.

Hilary retired, more sad, more hopeless about him than if he had slammed the door in her face, or scolded her like a trooper.  Had he met her seriousness in the same spirit, even though it had been a sullen or angry spirit—­and little as she said he must have felt she wished him to feel—­that his aunts were displeased with him; but that utterly unrepressible light-heartedness of his—­there was no doing any thing with it.  There was so to speak, “no catching hold” of Ascott.  He meant no harm.  She repeated over and over again that the lad meant no harm.  He had no evil ways; was always pleasant, good-natured, and affectionate, in his own careless fashion; but was no more to be relied on than a straw that every wind blows hither and thither; or, to use a common simile, a butterfly that never sees any thing farther than the nearest flower.  His was, in short, the pleasure-loving temperament, not positively sinful or sensual, but still holding pleasure as the greatest good; and regarding what deeper natures call “duty,” and find therein their strong-hold and consolation, as a mere bugbear or a sentimental theory, or an impossible folly.

Poor lad! and he had the world to fight with; how would it use him?  Even if no heavy sorrows for himself or others smote him, his handsome face would have to grow old, his strong frame to meet sickness—­death.—­How would he do it?  That is the thought which always recurs.  What is the end of such men as these?  Alas! the answer would come from hospital wards, alms-houses and work-houses, debtors’ prisons and lunatic asylums.

To apprehensions like this—­except the last, happily it was as yet too far off—­Hilary had been slowly and sadly arriving about Ascott for weeks past; and her conversation with him to-night seemed to make them darken down upon her with added gloom.  As she went up stairs she set her lips together hard.

“I see there is nobody to do any thing except me.  But I must not tell Johanna.”