it was done by the side of the baby's cradle, and the little one's
presence almost healed the abiding pain of my mother's loss.

I may pass very quickly over the next two years. In August, 1870, a
little sister was born to my son, and the recovery was slow and tedious,
for my general health had been failing for some time. I was, among other
things, fretting much about my mother, who was in sore trouble. A lawyer
in whom she had had the most perfect confidence betrayed it; for years
she had paid all her large accounts through him, and she had placed her
money in his hands. Suddenly he was discovered by his partners to have
been behaving unfairly; the crash came, and my mother found that all the
money given by her for discharge of liabilities had vanished, while the
accounts were unpaid, and that she was involved in debt to a very serious
extent. The shock was a very terrible one to her, for she was too old to
begin the world afresh. She sold off all she had, and used the money, as
far as it would go, to pay the debts she believed to have been long ago
discharged, and she was thus left penniless after thinking she had made a
little competence for her old age. Lord Hatherley's influence obtained
for my brother the post of undersecretary to the Society of Arts, and
also some work from the Patent Office, and my mother went to live with
him. But the dependence was intolerable to her, though she never let
anyone but myself know she suffered, and even I, until her last illness,
never knew how great her suffering had been. The feeling of debt weighed
on her, and broke her heart; all day long while my brother was at his
office, through the bitter winter weather, she would sit without a fire,
lighting it only a little before his home-coming, so that she might save
all the expense she could; often and often she would go out about
half-past twelve, saying that she was going out to lunch, and would walk
about till late in the afternoon, so as to avoid the lunch-hour at home.
I have always felt that the winter of 1870-1 killed her, though she lived