dismay at the thought that there might ever be any possible estrangement between his mother and himself.

He stepped towards the middle of the room, and tried to steady his voice.

Oh, indeed!

"I will not be a workman," he said resolutely. "Oh, Jack," murmured Charlotte despairingly. It was d'Argenton's turn to speak. "Ah, you will not be a workman! here is a young man who will or will not accept a thing that I have decided myself. You will not be a workman. But you are willing to eat, aren't you? And you are willing to be clothed, fed, sheltered, spoiled. Very well. I tell you, I've had enough of you, you detestable little parasite; and if you do not choose to work, I at least refuse to be any longer your dupe."

He paused abruptly, and passing from his mad rage to the glacial manner habitual to him:

"Go to your room," he said. "I will see what is to be done."

"What is to be done, my dear d'Argenton, I will soon tell you."

But Jack did not hear the end of Monsieur Rivals' sentence, for d'Argenton shoved him out of the room.

In his bedroom, the noise of the discussion reached him like the varied sounds of a great orchestra. He could distinguish the voices, and recognize them all, but one voice was swallowed up in another, all of them united by their resonance, until there was only a discordant uproar, in

which bits of phrases could be made out here and there.

"That's a lie!"

"Gentlemen! gentlemen!"

"Life is not a romance."

"The sacred blouse — beûh, beûh !”

At last the thunders of old Rivals' voice resounded as he crossed the threshold:

"May I be hanged if I ever set foot in this house again."

Then the door banged noisily, and there was a prolonged silence in the dining-room, interrupted only by the rattle of forks that were kept constantly in motion.

They were breakfasting.

"You wish to degrade him, to make him lower than yourselves." The child could not forget that phrase, and he understood only too well, without those words, that this was the real intention of his enemy.

Then a thousand times, no! He would not be a working man.

The door opened. His mother entered. She had been crying, genuine tears, that leave their furrows. For the first time the look of a mother appeared upon the face of that pretty woman, a mother in sorrow, stabbed to the heart.

"Listen to me, Jack," she said, trying to be severe. "I must talk to you seriously. You have just made me very unhappy by putting yourself in open rebellion against your true friends, and refusing to accept the position they have

offered you. Of course, I know that this new existence

While she spoke, she evaded the child's eyes, in which there was an expression so sorrowful, reproachful and full of anguish that she would not have been able to resist it.

"That this new existence which we have planned for you is apparently quite out of keeping with the life you have led up to this day. I confess, myself, that at first the thought of it terrified me, but you heard, did you not, what was said to you? The condition of the laboring man is quite different from what it once was, oh, entirely different, entirely different. The day of the working man has come, you understand. The middle class has had its day, the nobility too,- though, really the nobility, I think- But at your age is n't it really much better to allow yourself to be guided by those who love you and who have experience?

A sob from the child interrupted her:

"Then you too, you too, send me away."

This time the mother in her was too strong to be repressed. She took him in her arms, and clasped him passionately to her breast.

"I, I send you, away? Can you think such a thing? Is it possible? Come, be calm, don't tremble like that. You know how much I love you, and that if it depended upon me, you should never leave me. But we must be reasonable, and think a little about the future. Alas, that future looks dark enough for us."