The household had long retired, and she put the remains of her
son's meal away with her own hands, then sat down by the fire, thinking.
She had more subject for thought than most women; her life had been
eventful, her experience strange. We know what her second husband--the
man who repudiated her and her child--had been and was. Her first
husband had been scarcely less remarkable. Leonard Yorke was a young man
of respectable family, and of tolerable means. His parents were dead,
and his relatives and himself had parted company early. They were sober,
steady people, connected with the iron trade: a share in their house of
business at Birmingham, carried on in the name of his two uncles, was
the only tie between him and them, save that of kinship. They were
strong Unitarians, strong political economists, strong in their rugged
material fashion every way. They did not know what to do with a nephew
who was a religious zealot, and thought all the world was out of joint;
and they had characteristically sought for assistance in the advertising
columns of the _Times_. Mr. Hardcastle therein proclaimed himself as
having a specialty for the reduction and reform of intractable young
gentlemen, and they had consigned Leonard to his establishment. It was
the best thing that they could think of--for they were genuinely
conscientious men--and they did not grudge the money, though the tutor's
terms were high.
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