"I never taught you to be fickle," she said, with a kind of shamed bewilderment.
"I never have been fickle.

This is something else worse." Burr looked at his mother again, with the old expression of his when he had come in hurt from play.

No matter how long Burr Gordon might live, no matter what brave deeds he might do--and there was brave stuff in him, for he would have gone to the gallows rather than betray Madelon--there would always be in him the appeal of a child to the woman who loved him.

"Mother, I don't know how to bear it," he said.
"You must bear it like a man." "It is hard to bear the consequence of unmanly conduct like a man," said Burr, shortly; then he went out, as if the old comfort from his mother had failed him.

As for her, she finished heeling her stocking, and then went out into the kitchen and made a pudding that her son loved for his dinner.
Burr went back up-stairs to his cold chamber, and watched for Madelon to come out of Lot's house.