She found nothing to oppose to her husband's will of steel but the
appearance of absolute compliance; her spirit sank, and she lived for
a while in a sort of helpless moral torpor. But at last, as her child
emerged from babyhood, she began to feel a certain charm in patience, to
discover the uses of ingenuity, and to learn that, somehow or other, one
can always arrange one's life. She cultivated from this time forward a
little private plot of sentiment, and it was of this secluded precinct
that, before her death, she gave her son the key. Rowland's allowance at
college was barely sufficient to maintain him decently, and as soon as
he graduated, he was taken into his father's counting-house, to do small
drudgery on a proportionate salary. For three years he earned his living
as regularly as the obscure functionary in fustian who swept the office.
Mr. Mallet was consistent, but the perfection of his consistency was
known only on his death. He left but a third of his property to his
son, and devoted the remainder to various public institutions and local
charities. Rowland's third was an easy competence, and he never felt
a moment's jealousy of his fellow-pensioners; but when one of the
establishments which had figured most advantageously in his father's
will bethought itself to affirm the existence of a later instrument, in
which it had been still more handsomely treated, the young man felt a
sudden passionate need to repel the claim by process of law.
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