The unhappy mother was powerless to check the evil the growth of which
was so patent to her loving instinct, and there was none to whom she
could look for help. Mrs. Basil had no longer any influence with
Solomon, and, besides, she was seriously ill, and had now been confined
to her own room for weeks. In her extremity, Harry had even resolved to
make a personal appeal to this man Balfour; to ask him in what her
husband had injured him, to adjure him to forgive the wrong, or at least
not to visit it upon her Charley's innocent head. But she shrank with an
inexplicable terror from putting this design into effect; she felt she
should humiliate herself to no purpose; he would deny, in his cold,
cynical way, that he entertained any thing but friendship for her astute
husband and affection for her bright and impulsive son. Besides, to say
truth, she was afraid to speak with the man; and she had a suspicion
that this weird and shadowy fear was in some degree shared by Mrs.
Basil; at times she even imagined that it was not so much indisposition
as a desire to avoid his presence that caused the landlady to absent
herself from the family circle.
Mr. Coe, at all events, entertained no such prejudice against his guest;
day by day he grew more communicative with him, and more solicitous to
hear his opinions, with which he seldom failed to agree.
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