“Well, sir,” said Mrs. Jennings, “and how did it end?”

“I am sorry to say, ma’am, in a most unhappy rupture:⁠—Edward is dismissed forever from his mother’s notice. He left her house yesterday, but where he is gone, or whether he is still in town, I do not know; for we of course can make no inquiry.”

“Poor young man!⁠—and what is to become of him?”

“What, indeed, ma’am! It is a melancholy consideration. Born to the prospect of such affluence! I cannot conceive a situation more deplorable. The interest of two thousand pounds⁠—how can a man live on it? And when to that is added the recollection, that he might, but for his own folly, within three months have been in the receipt of two thousand, five hundred a year (for Miss Morton has thirty thousand pounds), I cannot picture to myself a more wretched condition. We must all feel for him; and the more so, because it is totally out of our power to assist him.”