He had again and again made out for himself that he might have kept his little boy, his little dull boy who had died at school of rapid diphtheria, if he had not in those years so insanely given himself to merely missing the mother.

It was the soreness of his remorse that the child had in all likelihood not really been dull--had been dull, as he had been banished and neglected, mainly because the father had been unwittingly selfish.

This was doubtless but the secret habit of sorrow, which had slowly given way to time; yet there remained an ache sharp enough to make the spirit, at the sight now and again of some fair young man just growing up, wince with the thought of an opportunity lost.

Had ever a man, he had finally fallen into the way of asking himself, lost so much and even done so much for so little?
There had been particular reasons why all yesterday, beyond other days, he should have had in one ear this cold enquiry.

His name on the green cover, where he had put it for Mrs.Newsome, expressed him doubtless just enough to make the world--the world as distinguished, both for more and for less, from Woollett--ask who he was.