The man had, in fact, an organic disorder, which
proved fatal to him before he could quite decide whether to write
his book on foolscap or on quarto paper. Mrs. Woolstan devoted
herself to her child, until, when Leonard was nine, she entrusted
him to a tutor very highly spoken of by friends of hers, a young
Oxford man, capable not only of instructing the boy in the most
efficient way, but of training whatever force and originality his
character might possess. She paid a hundred and fifty pounds a year
for these invaluable services--in itself not a large stipend, but
large in proportion to her income. And Iris had never grudged the
expenditure, for in Dyce Lashmar she found, not merely a tutor for
her son, but a director of her own mind and conscience. Under Dyce's
influence she had read or tried to read--many instructive books;
he had fostered, guided, elevated her native enthusiasm; he had
emancipated her soul. These, at all events, were the terms in which
Iris herself was wont to describe the results of their friendship,
and she was eminently a sincere woman, ever striving to rise above
the weakness, the disingenuousness, of her sex.
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