seen a great many selfish, mercenary people in his life, and he had
not a good opinion of Americans. When he had been driven into the cheap
street, and his coupe had stopped before the cheap, small house, he had
felt actually shocked. It seemed really quite dreadful to think that the
future owner of Dorincourt Castle and Wyndham Towers and Chorlworth, and
all the other stately splendors, should have been born and brought up in
an insignificant house in a street with a sort of green-grocery at the
corner. He wondered what kind of a child he would be, and what kind of a
mother he had. He rather shrank from seeing them both. He had a sort of
pride in the noble family whose legal affairs he had conducted so long,
and it would have annoyed him very much to have found himself obliged to
manage a woman who would seem to him a vulgar, money-loving person, with
no respect for her dead husband's country and the dignity of his name.
It was a very old name and a very splendid one, and Mr. Havisham had
a great respect for it himself, though he was only a cold, keen,
business-like old lawyer.

When Mary handed him into the small parlor, he looked around it
critically. It was plainly furnished, but it had a home-like look; there
were no cheap, common ornaments, and no cheap, gaudy pictures; the few
adornments on the walls were in good taste and about the room were many
pretty things which a woman's hand might have made.

"Not at all bad so far," he had said to himself; "but perhaps the
Captain's taste predominated." But when Mrs. Errol came into the room,
he began to think she herself might have had something to do with it. If
he had not been quite a self-contained and stiff old gentleman, he would
probably have started when he saw her. She looked, in the simple black
dress, fitting closely to her slender figure, more like a young girl
than the mother of a boy of seven. She had a pretty, sorrowful, young