A Country Gentleman

IV.

IT will be divined from what has been said that there was one element in the life at the Warren which has not yet been entered into, and that was Mrs. Warrender. The family were dull, respectable, and proper to their fingers’ ends. But she was not dull. She had been Mr. Warrender’s wife for six and twenty years, — the wife of a dull, good man, who never wanted any variety in his life, who needed no change, no outbursts of laughter or tears, nothing to carry away the superabundance of the waters of life. With him there had been no superabundance, there had never been any floods ; consequently, there was no outlet necessary to carry them away. But she was a woman of another sort: she was born to hunger for variety, to want change, to desire everything that was sweet and pleasant. And lo! fate bound her to the dullest life, — to marry Mr. Warrender, to live in the Warren. She had not felt it so much in the earlier part of her life, for then she had to some extent what her spirit craved. She had children : and every such event in a woman’s life is like what going into battle is to a man, — a thing for which all his spirits collect themselves, which she may come out of or may not, an enormous risk, a great crisis. And when their children were young, before they had as yet betrayed themselves what manner of spirits they were, she had her share of the laughter and the tears ; playing with her babies, living for them, singing to them, filling her life with them, and expecting as they grew up that all would be well. Many women live upon this hope. They have not had the completion of life in marriage which some have ; they have failed in the great lottery, either by their own fauit or the fault of others : but the children, they say to themselves, will make all right. The désillusionment which takes this form is the most bitter of all. The woman who has not found in her husband that dearest friend, whose companionship can alone make life happy, when she discovers after a while that the children in whom she has placed her last hope are his children, and not hers, — what is to become of her ? She is thrown back upon her own individuality with a shock which is often more than flesh and blood can hear. In Mrs. Warrender’s case this was not, as in sumo cases, a tragical discovery, but it had an exasperating and oppressive character which was almost more terrible. She had been able to breathe while they were children ; but when they grew up they stifled her, each with the same “host of petty maxims” which had darkened the still air from her husband’s lips. How, in face of the fact that she had been their teacher and guide far more than their father ever was, they should have learned these, and put aside everything that was like her or expressed her sentiments, was a mystery which she never could solve; but so it was. Mr. Warrender was what is called a very good father. He did not spoil them ; bonbons of any kind, physical or spiritual, never came to them from his hands. He could not be troubled with them much as babies, but when they grew old enough to walk and ride with him he liked their company ; and they resembled him, which is always flattering. But he had taken very little notice of them during the first twelvo years or so of their life. During that time they had been entirely in their mother’s hands, hearing her opinions, regulated outwardly by her will: and yet they grew up their father’s children, and not hers ! How strange it was, with a touch of the comic which made her laugh! — that laugh of exasperation and impatience which marks the intolerable almost more than tears do. How was it? Can any one explain this mystery ? She was of a much more vivacious, robust, and vigorous race than he was, for the level of health among the Warrenders, like the level of being generally, was low; but this lively, warm-blooded, energetic creature was swallowed up in the dull current of the family life, and did not affect it at all. She nursed them, ruled them, breathed her life into them, in vain : they were their father’s children, — they were Warrenders born.

This was not precisely the case with Theo, her only son. To him she had transmitted something ; not her energy and love of life, but rather something of that exasperated impatience which was so often the temper of her mind in later years, though suppressed by all the powers of self-control she possessed, and modified, happily, by the versatility of her nature, which could not brood and mope over one subject, however deeply that might enter into her life. This impatience took in him the form of a fastidious intolerance, a disposition to start aside at a touch, to put up with nothing, to hear no reason, even, when he was offended or crossed. He was like a restive horse, whom the mere movement of a shadow, much more the touch of a rein or the faintest vibration of a whip, sets off in the wildest gallop of nervous selfwill or self-assertion. The horse, it is to be supposed, desires his own way as much as the man does when he bolts or starts. Theo was in this respect wonderfully unlike the strain of the Warrenders, but he was not on that account more like his mother ; and he had so much of the calm of the paternal blood in his veins along with this unmanageableness that he was as contented as the rest with the quiet of the home life, and so long as he was permitted to shut himself up with his book wished for no distraction, — nay, disliked it, and thought society and amusements an intolerable bore.

Thus it was the mother alone to whom the thought of change was pleasant. A woman of forty-five in widow’s weeds, who had just nursed her husband through a long illness and lost him, and whose life since she was nineteen had been spent in this quiet house among all these still surroundings, amid the unchangeable traditions of rural life, — who could have ventured to imagine the devouring impatience that was within her, the desire to flee, to shake the dust qff her feet, to leave her home and all her associations, to get out into the world and breathe a larger air and be free ? Sons and daughters may entertain such sentiments; even the girls, whose life, no doubt, had been a dull one, might be supposed willing enough, with a faint pretense of natural and traditionary reluctance, and those few natural tears which are wiped so soon, to leave home and see the world. But the mother ! In ordinary circumstances it would have been the duty of the historian to set forth the hardness of Mrs. Warrender’s case, deprived at once, by her husband’s death, not only of her companion and protector, but of her home and position as head of an important house. Such a case is no doubt often a hard one. It adds a hundred little humiliations to grief, and makes bereavement downfall, the overthrow of a woman’s importance in the world, and her exile from the sphere in which she has spent her life. We should be far more sure of the reader’s sympathy if we pictured her visiting for the last time all the familiar haunts of past years, tearing herself away from the beloved rooms, feeling the world a blank before her as she turned away.

On the contrary, it is scarcely possible to describe the chill of disappointment in her mind when Theo put an abrupt stop to all speculations, and offered her his arm to lead her upstairs. She ought, perhaps, to have wanted his support to go upstairs, after all, as her maid said, that she had “ gone through : ” but she did not feel the necessity. She would have preferred much to know what was going to be done, to talk over everything, to be able to express without further sense that they were premature and inappropriate as much as it would be expedient to express of her own wishes. The absolute repression of those five dark days, during which she had said nothing, had been almost more intolerable to her than years of the repression which was past. When you know that nothing you can do or say is of any use, and that whatsoever struggle you may make will be wholly ineffectual to change your lot, it is comparatively easy, in the composure of impossibility, to keep yourself down ; but when all at once you become again master of your own fate, even a temporary curb becomes intolerable. Mrs. Warrender went into her room by the compulsion of her son and conventional propriety, and was supposed to lie down on the sofa and rest for an hour or two. Her maid arranged the cushions for her, threw a shawl over her feet, and left her on tip-toe, shutting the door with elaborate precautions. Mrs. Warrender remained still for nearly half an hour. She wept, with a strange mixture of feelings; partly out of a poignant sense of the fictitiousness of all these observances by which people were supposed to show “ respect ” to the dead, and partly out of a real aching of the heart and miserable sense that even now, that certainly by and by, the man who had been so all-important a little while ago would be as if lie had not been. She wept for him, and yet at the same time wept because she could not weep more for him, because the place which knew him had already begun to know him no more, and because of the sham affliction with which they were all supplementing the true. It was she who shed the truest tears, but it was she also who rebelled most at the makebelieve which convention forced upon her; and the usual sense of hopeless exasperation was strong in her mind. After a while she threw off the shawl from her feet and the cushions that supported her shoulders, and got up and walked about the room, looking out upon the afternoon sunshine and the trees that were turning their shadows to the east. How she longed, with a fervor scarcely explainable, not at all comprehensible to most people, to leave the place, to open her wings in a large atmosphere, to get free !

At half past four o’clock Minnie and Chatty went down to tea. They were to the minute, and their mother heard them with a half smile. It was always time enough for her to smooth her hair and her collar, and take a new handkerchief from her drawer, when she heard the sisters close their door. She went downstairs after them, in her gown covered with crape, with her snowy cap, which gave dignity to her appearance. Her widow’s dress was very becoming to her, as it is to so many people. She had a pretty complexion, pure red aurl white, though the color was perhaps a little broken, and not so smooth as a girl’s; and her eyes were brown and bright. Notwithstanding the weeks of watching she had gone through, the strain of everything that had passed, she made little show of her trouble. Her eye was not dim, nor her natural force abated. The girls were dull in complexion and aspect, but their mother was not so. As she came into the room there came with her a brightness, a sense of living, which was inappropriate to the hour and the place.

“ Where is Theo ? ” she asked.

“ He is coming in presently ; at least, I called to him as he went out, and told him tea was ready, and he said he would be in presently,” Chatty replied.

“ I wish he would have stayed, if it had even been in the grounds, to-day,” said Minnie. “It will look so strange to see him walking about as if nothing had happened.”

“ He has been very good; he has conformed to all our little rules,” said the mother, with a sigh.

“Little rules, mamma? Don’t you think it of importance, then, that every respect ” —

“ My dear,” said Mrs. Warrender, “ I am tired of hearing of every respect. Theo was always respectful and affectionate. I would not misconstrue him even if it should prove that he has taken a walk.”

“ On the day of dear papa’s funeral! ” cried Minnie, with a voice unmoved.

Mrs. Warrender turned away without any reply; partly because the tears sprang into her eyes at the matter-offact statement, and partly because her patience was exhausted.

“ Have you settled, mamma, what he is going to do ? ” said Chatty.

“It is not for me to decide. He is twenty-one ; he is his own master. You have not,” Mrs. Warrender said, “ taken time to think yet of the change in our circumstances. Theo is now master here. Everything is his to do as he pleases.”

“ Everything ! ” said the girls in chorus, opening their eyes.

“ I mean, of course, everything but what is yours and what is mine. You know your father’s will. He has been very just, very kind, as he always was.” She paused a little, and then went on : “ But your brother, as you know, is now the master here. We must understand what his wishes are before we can settle on anything.”

“ Why should n’t we go on as we always have done?” said Minnie. “Theo is too young to marry ; besides, it would not be decent for a time, even if he wanted to, which I am sure he does not. I don’t see why we should make any change. There is nowhere we can be so well as at home.”

“ Oh, nowhere ! ” said Chatty.

Their mother sat and looked at them, with a dull throb in her heart. They had sentiment and right on their side, and nature, too. Everybody would agree that for a bereaved family there was no place so good as home,—the house in which they were born and where they had lived all their life. She looked at them blankly, feeling how unnatural, how almost wicked, was the longing in her own mind to get away, to escape into some place where she could take large breaths and feel a wide sky over her. But how was she to say it, how even to conclude what she had been saying, feeling how inharmonious it was with everything around ?

“ Still,” she said meekly, “ I am of Mr. Longstaffe’s opinion that everything should be fully understood between us from the first. If we all went on just the same, it might be very painful to Theo, when the. time came for him to marry (not now ; of course there is no question of that now), to feel that he could not do so without turning his mother and sisters out-of-doors.”

“ Why should he marry, so long as he has us? It is not as if he had nobody, and wanted some one to make him a home. What would he do with the house if we were to leave it ? Would he let it ? I don’t believe he could let it. It would set everybody talking. Why should he turn his mother and sisters out-of-doors ? Oh, I never thought of anything so dreadful! ” cried Minnie and Chatty, one uttering one exclamation, and another the other. They were very literal, and in the minds of both the grievance was at once taken for granted. “ Oh, I never could have thought such a thing of Theo, — our own brother, and younger than we are ! ”

The mother had made two or three ineffectual attempts to stem the tide of indignation. “ Theo is thinking of nothing of the kind,” she said at last, when they were out of breath. “I only say that he must not feel he has but that alternative when the time comes, when he may wish — when it may he expedient— No, no, he has never thought of such a thing. I only say it for the sake of the future, to forestall after-complications.”

“ Oh, I wish you would n’t frighten one, mamma! I thought you had heard about some girl he had picked up at Oxford, or something. I thought we should have to turn out, to leave the Warren — which would break my heart.”

“And mine too,—and mine too!” cried Chatty.

“ Where we have always been so happy, with nothing to disturb us! ”

“ Oh, so happy ! always the same, one day after another! It will he different,” said the younger sister, crying a little, “now that dear papa— But still no place ever can he like home.”

And there was the guilty woman sitting by, listening to everything they said ; feeling how good, how natural, it was, — and still more natural, still more seemly, for her, at her age, than for them at theirs, — yet conscious that this house was a prison to her, and that of all things in the world that which she wanted most was to he turned out and driven away !

“ My dears,” she said, not daring to betray this feeling, “if I have frightened you, I did not mean to do it. The house in Highcombe, yon know, is mine. It will he our home if — if anything should happen. I thought it might he wise to have that ready, to make it our headquarters, in case — in case Theo should carry out the improvements.”

“ Improvements ! ” they cried with one voice. “ What, improvements ? How could the Warren he improved ? ”

“ You must not speak to me in such a tone. There has always been a question of cutting down some of the trees.”

“ But papa would never agree to it; papa said he would never consent to it.”

“ I think,” said Mrs. Warrender, with a guilty blush, “ that he — had begun to change his mind.”

“ Only when he was growing weak, then, — only when you over-persuaded him.”

“ Minnie! I see that your brother was right, and that this is not a time for any discussion,” Mrs. Warrender said.

There was again a silence : and they all came back to the original state of mind from which they started, and remembered that quiet and subdued tones and an incapacity for the consideration of secular subjects were the proper mental attitude for all that remained of this day.

It was not, however, long that this becoming condition lasted. Sounds were heard as of voices in the distance, and then some one running at full speed across the gravel drive in front of the door, and through the hall. Minnie had risen up in horror to stop this interruption, when the door burst open, and Theo, pale and excited, rushed in. “Mother,” he cried, “ there has been a dreadful accident. Markland has been thrown by those wild brutes of his, and I don’t know what has happened to him. It was just at the gates, and they are bringing him here. There is no help for it. Where can they take him to? ”

Mrs. Warrender rose to her feet at once; her heart rising too almost with pleasure to the thrill of a new event. She hurried out to open Lhe door of a large vacant room on the ground floor. “ What was Lord Markland doing here ? ” she said. “ He ought to have reached home long ago.”

“ He has been in that house in the village, mother. They seemed to think everybody would understand. I don’t know what he has to do there.”

“ He has nothing to do there. Oh, Theo, that poor young wife of his! And had he the heart to go from — from — us, in our trouble — there ! ”

“ He seems to have paid for it, whatever was wrong in it. Go back to the drawing-room, for here they are coming.”

“ Theo, they are carrying him as if he were ” —

“ Go back to the drawing-room, mother. Whatever it is, it cannot be helped,” Theodore said. He did not mean it, but there was something in his tone which reminded everybody — the servants, who naturally came rushing to see what was the matter, and Mrs. Warrender, who withdrew at his bidding — that he was now the master of the house.

V.

Markland was a much more important place than the Warren. It was one of the chief places in the county, in which the family had for many generations held so great a position. It was a large building, with all that irregularity of architecture which is dear to the English mind, - a record of the generations who had passed through it and added to it, in itself a noble historical monument, full of indications of the past. But it lost much of its effect upon the mind from the fact that it was in much less good order than is usual with houses of similar pretensions ; and above all because the wood around it had been wantonly and wastefully cut, and it stood almost unsheltered upon its little eminence, with only a few seedling trees, weedy and long, like boys who had outgrown their strength, straggling about the heights. The house itself was thus left bare to all the winds. An old cedar, very large but very feeble, in the tottering condition of old age to which some trees, like men, come, with two or three of its longest branches torn off by storm and decay, interposed its dark foliage over the lower roof of the lowest wing, and gave a little appearance of shelter, and a few Lombardy poplars and light-leaved young birches made a thin and interrupted screen to the east; but the house stood clear of these light and frivolous young attendants in a nakedness which made the spectator shiver. The wood in the long avenue had been thinned in almost the same ruthless way, but here and there were shady corners, where old trees, not worth much in the market, but very valuable to the landscape, laid their heads together like ancient retainers, and rustled and nodded their disapproval of the devastation around.

Young Lady Markland, with her boy, on the afternoon of the July day on which Mr. Warrender was buried, walked up and down for some time in front of the house, casting many anxious looks down the avenue, by which, in its present denuded state, every approaching visitor was so easily visible. She was still very young, though her child was about eight; she having been married, so to speak, out of the nursery, a young creature of sixteen, a motherless girl, with no one to investigate too closely into the character of the young lover, who was not much more than a boy himself, and between whom and his girlish bride a hot, foolish young love had sprung up like a mushroom, in a week or two of acquaintance. She was twenty-five, but did not look her age. She was small in stature, — one of those exquisitely neat little women, whose perfection of costume and appearance no external accident disturbs. Her dress had the look of being moulded on her light little figure; her hair was like brown satin, smooth as a mirror and reflecting the light. She did not possess the large grace of abstract beauty. There was nothing statuesque, nothing majestic, about her, but a kind of mild perfection, a fitness and harmony which called forth the approval of the more serious-minded portion of humanity as well as the admiration of the younger and more frivolous.

It was generally known in the county that this young lady had far from a happy life. She had been married in haste and over-confidence by guardians who, if not glad to be rid of her, were at least pleased to feel that their responsibility was over, and the orphan safe in her husband’s care, without taking too much pains to prove that the husband was worthy of that charge, or that there was much reasonable prospect of his devotion to it. Young Markland, it was understood, had sown his wild oats somewhat plentifully at Oxford and elsewdiere ; and it was therefore supposed, with very little logic, that there were no more to sow. But this had not proved to be the case, and almost before his young wife had reached the age of understanding, and was able to put two and two together, he had run through the fortune she brought him, — not a very large one, — and made her heart ache, which was worse, as hearts under twenty ought never to learn how to ache. She was not a happy wife. The country all about, the servants, and every villager near knew it, but not from Lady Markland. She was very loyal, which is a noble quality, and very proud, which in some cases does duty as a noble quality, and is accepted as such. What were the secrets of her married life no one ever heard from her; and fortunately those griefs which were open to all the world were unknown to her. She did not know, save vaguely, in what society her husband spent the frequent absences which separated him from her. She did not know what kind of friends he made, what houses he frequented, even in his own neighborhood ; and she was still under the impression that many of her wrongs were known by herself alone, and that his character had suffered but little in the eyes of the world.

There was one person, however, from whom she had not been able to hide these wrongs, and that was her child, — her only child. There had been two other babies, dead at their birth or immediately after, but Geoff was the only one who had lived, her constant companion, counselor, and aid. At eight years old ! Those who had never known what a child can be at that age, when thus intrusted with the perilous deposit of the family secrets, and elevated to the post which his father ought but did not care to fill, were apt to think little Geoff s development unnatural ; and others thought, with reason, that it was bad for the little fellow to be so constantly with his mother, and it was said among the Markland relations that as he was now growing a great boy he ought to be sent to school. Poor little Geoff! He was not a great boy, nor ever would be. He was small, chétif, unbeautiful ; a little sandy-haired, sandycomplexioned, insignificant boy, with no features to speak of and no stamina, short fur his age and of uncertain health, which had indeed been the first reason of that constant association with his mother which was supposed to be so bad for him. During the first years of his life, which had been broken by continual illness, it was only her perpetual care that kept him alive at all. She had never left him, never given up the charge of him to any one ; watched him by night and lived with him by day. His careless father would sometimes say, in one of those brags which show a heart of shame even in the breast of the vicious, that if he had not left her so much to herself, if he had dragged her about into society, as so many men did their wives, she never would have kept her boy ; and perhaps there was some truth in it. While he pursued his pleasures in regions where no wife could accompany him, she was free to devote all her life, and to find out every new expedient that skill or science had thought of to lengthen out the feeble days, and to gain time to make a cure possible. He would never be very strong was the verdict now, but with care he would live: and it was she who had over again breathed life into him. This made the tie a double one; not out of gratitude, for the child knew of no such secondary sentiment, but out of the redoubled love which their constant association called forth. They did not talk together of any family sorrows. It was never intimated between them that anything wrong happened when papa was late and mamma anxious, or when there were people at Markland who were not nice, — oh, not a word ; but the child was anxious as well as mamma, He too got the habit of watching, listening for the hurried step, the wild rattle of the phaeton with those two wild horses, which Lord Markland insisted on driving up the avenue. He knew everything, partly by observation, partly by instinct. He walked with his mother now, clinging with both hands to her arm, his head nearly on a level with her shoulder, and close, close to it, almost touching, his little person confused in the outline of her dress. The sunshine lay full along the line of the avenue, just broken in two or three places by the shadow of those old and useless trees, but without a speck upon it or a sound.

“ I don’t think papa can be coming, Geoff, and it is time you had your tea.”

“ Never mind me. I ’ll go and take it by myself, if you want me to, and you can wait here.”

“ Why ? ” she said. “ It will not bring him home a moment sooner, as you and I know.”

“No, but it feels as if it made him come ; and you can see from the very gate. It takes a long time to drive up the avenue. Oh, yes, stop here; you will like that best.”

“ I am so silly.” she said, which was her constant excuse. “ When yon are grown up, Geoff, I shall always be watching for you.”

“ That you sha’n’t,” said the boy. " I ’ll never leave you. You have had enough of that.”

“ Oh, yes, my darling, you will leave me. I shall want you to leave me. A boy cannot be always with his mother. Come, now, I am going to be strongminded. Let us go in. I am a little tired, I think.”

“ Perhaps the funeral was later than he thought,” said the boy.

“ Perhaps. It was very kind of papa to go. He does not like things of that kind; and he was not over-fond of Mr. Warrender, who, though he was very good, was a little dull. Papa does n’t like dull people.”

“ No. Do you like Theo Warrender, mamma?”

“ Well enough,” said Lady Markland. “ I don’t know him very much.”

“ I like him,” said the child. “ He knows a lot : he told me how to do that Latin. He is the sort of man I should like for my tutor.”

“ But he is a gentleman, Geoff. I mean, he would never be a tutor. He is as well off as we are, — perhaps better.”

“ Are men tutors only when they are not well off ? ”

“ Well, dear, generally when they require the money. You could not expect young Mr. Warrender to come here and take a great deal of trouble, merely for the pleasure of teaching you.”

“ Why not?” said Geoff. “ Is n’t it a fine thing to teach children? It was you that said so, mamma.”

“ For me, dear, that am your mother ; but not for a gentleman who is not even a relation.”

“ Gentlemen, to be sure, are different,” said Geoff, with an air of deliberation. “ There’s papa, for instance ” —

His mother threw up her hand suddenly. “Hark, Geoff! Do you hear anything ? ”

They had come in-doors while this talk was going on, and were now seated in a large but rather shabby sitting-room, which was full of Geoff’s toys and books. The windows were wide open, but the sounds from without came in subdued ; for this room was at the back of the house, and at some distance from the avenue. They were both silent for some minutes, listening, and then Lady Markland said, with an air of relief, “ Papa is coining. I hear the sound of the phaeton.”

“ That is not the phaeton, mamma ; that is only one horse,” said Geoff, whose senses were very keen. When Lady Markland had listened a little longer, she acquiesced in this opinion.

“It will he some one coming to call,” she said, with an air of resignation ; and then they went on with their talk.

“Gentlemen are different; they are not given the charge of the children like you.”

“ However, in books,” said Geoff, “ the fathers very often are a great deal of good ; they tell you all sorts of things. But hooks are not very like real life; do you think they are? Even Frank, in Miss Edgeworth, though you say he is so good, does n’t do tilings like me. I mean, I should never think of doing things like him ; and no little girl would ever be so silly. Now, mamma, say true, what do you think ? Would any little girl ever he so silly as to want the big bottle out of a physic shop ? Girls may he silly, hut not so had as that.”

“ Perhaps, let us hope, she did n’t know so much about physic shops, as you call them, as you do, my poor boy. I wonder who can he calling to-day, Geoff ! I should have thought that everybody near would be thinking of the Warrendors, and — It is coming very fast, don’t you think ? But it does not sound like the phaeton.”

“Oh, no, it is not the phaeton. I’ll go and look,” said Geoff. He came hack in a moment, crying, “ I told you — it’s a brougham ! Coming at such a pace ! ”

“I wonder who it can be!” Lady Markland said.

And when the boy resumed his talk she listened with inattention, trying in vain to keep her interest fixed on what he was saying, making vague replies, turning over a hundred possibilities in her mind, but by some strange dullness, such as is usual enough in similar circumstances, never thinking of the real cause. What danger could there be to Markland in a drive of half a dozen miles, in the daylight; what risk in Mr. Warrender’s funeral ? The sense that something which was not an ordinary visit was coming grew stronger and stronger upon her, but of the news which was about to reach her she never thought at all.

At last the door opened. She rose hastily, unable to control herself, to meet it, whatever it was. It was not a ceremonious servant announcing a visit, but Theo Warrender, pale as death itself, with a whole tragic volume in his face, but speechless, not knowing, now that he stood before her, what to say, who appeared in the doorway. He had hurried off, bringing his mother’s little brougham to carry the young wife to her husband’s bedside; but it was not until he looked into her face and heard the low cry that burst from her that he realized what he had to tell. He had forgotten that a man requires all his skill and no small preparation to enable him to tell a young woman that her husband, who left her in perfect health a few hours ago, was now on the brink of death. He stopped short on the threshold, awed by this thought, and only stared at her, not knowing what to say.

“ Mr. Warrender ! ” she said, with the utmost surprise; then, with growing wonder and alarm, “You— Something has happened! ”

“Lady Markland—yes, there has been an accident. My mother — sent me with the brougham. I came off at once. Will you go back with me? The horse is very fast, and you can he there in half an hour.”

This was all he could find to say. She went up to him, holding out her hands in an almost speechless appeal. “ Why for me ? Why for me ? What has it got to do with me ? ”

He did not know how to answer her question. “ Lady Markland ! ” he cried, “ your husband ” — and said no more.

She was at the door of the brougham in a moment. She had not taken off her garden hat, and she wanted no preparation. The child sprang to her side, caught her arm, and went with her without a word or question, as if that were undeniably his place. Everybody knew and remarked upon the singular union between the neglected young wife and her only child, but Warrender felt, he could scarcely tell why, that it annoyed and irritated him at this moment. When he put her into the carriage, and the boy clambered after her, he was unaccountably vexed by it, — so much vexed that his profound sympathy for the poor lady seemed somehow checked. Instead of following them into the carriage, which was not a very roomy one, he shut the door upon them sharply. “ I will walk,” he said. “ I am not needed. Right, Jarvis, as fast as yon can go;” he stood by to see them dash off. Lady Markland giving him a surprised yet half-relieved look, in the paleness of her anxiety and misery. Then it suddenly became apparent to him that he had done what was best and most delicate, though without meaning it, out of the sudden annoyance which had risen within him. It was the best thing he could have done, but to walk six miles at the end of a fatiguing and trying day was not agreeable, and the sense of irritation was strong in him. “If ever I have anything to do with that boy” — he said involuntarily within himself. But what could he ever have to do with the boy, who probably by this time, little puny thing that he was, was Lord Markland, and the owner of all this great, bare, unhappy-lookiug place, eaten up by the locusts of waste and ruin.

The butler, an old servant, had been anxiously trying all this time to catch his eye. He came up now, as Warrender turned to follow on foot the carriage, which was already almost out of sight. “ I beg your pardon, sir,” he said, with the servant’s usual formula, “ but I ’ve sent round for the dogcart, if you ’ll be so kind as to wait a few minutes. None of us, sir, but feels your kindness, coming yourself for my lady, and leaving her alone in her trouble, poor dear. Mr. Warrender, sir, if I may make so bold, what is the fact about my lord ? Yes, sir, I beard what you told my lady; but I thought you would nat’rally say the best, not to frighten her. Is there any hope ? ”

“ Not much, I fear. He was thrown out violently, and struck against a tree ; they are afraid that his spine is injured.”

“Oh, sir, so young ! and oh, so careless. God help us, Mr. Warrender, wo never know a step before us, do we, sir ? If it’s the spine, it will be no pain; and him so joky, more than his usual, going off them very steps this morning, though he was going to a funeral. Oh, Mr. Warrender, that I should speak so light, forgetting— God bless us, what an awful thing, sir, after what has happened already, to happen in your house ! ”

Warrender answered with a nod, —he had no heart to speak ; and refusing the dogcart he set out on his walk home. An exquisite spring night: everything harsh stilled out of the atmosphere; the sounds of labor ceasing; a calm as of profoundest peace stealing over everything. The soft and subdued pain of his natural grief, hushed by that fatigue and exhaustion of both body and mind which a long strain produces, was not out of accord with the calm of nature. But very different was the harsh note of the new calamity, which had struck not the house in which the tragedy was being enacted, but this one, which lay bare and naked in the last light of the sinking sun. So young and so careless ! So young, so wasteful of life and all that life had to give, and now parted from it, taken from it at a blow !

VI.

Lord Markland died at the Warren that night. He never recovered consciousness, nor knew that his wife was by his side through all the dreadful darkening of the spring evening, which seemed to image forth in every new tone of gathering gloom the going out of life. They told her as much as was necessary of the circumstances, — how, the distance between the Warren and the churchyard being so short, and the whole cortége on foot, Lord Markland’s carriage had been left in the village ; how he had stayed there to luncheon (presumably with the rector, for no particulars were given, nor did the bewildered young woman ask for any), which was the reason of his delay. The rest was very easily explained: everybody had said to him that “ some accident ” would happen one day or other with the horses he insisted on driving, and the prophecy had been fulfilled. Such prophecies are always fulfilled. Lady Markland was very quiet, accepting that extraordinary revolution in her life with a look of marble, and words that betrayed nothing. Was she broken-hearted; was she only stunned by the suddenness, the awe, of such a catastrophe ? The boy clinging to her, yet without a tear, pale and silent, but never, even when the words were said that all was over, breaking forth into any childish outburst. He sat on the floor in her shadow, even when she was watching by the deathbed, never left her, keeping always a hold upon her arm, her hand, or her dress. Mrs. Warrender would have taken him away, and put him to bed, — it was so bad for him; but the boy opposed a steady resistance, and Lady Markland put down her hand to him, not seeing how wrong it was to indulge him, all the ladies said. After this, of course nothing could be done, and he remained with her through all that followed. What followed was strange enough to have afforded a scene for a tragedy. Lady Markland asked to speak to Warrender, who had retired, leaving his mother, as was natural, to manage everything. He came to her at the door of the room which had so suddenly, with its bare, unused look, in the darkness of a few flickering candles, become a sort of presence chamber filled with the solemnity of dying. Her little figure, so neat and orderly, an embodiment of the settled peace and calm of life having nothing to do with tragedies, with the child close pressed against her side, his pale face looking as hers did, pale too and stony, never altogether passed from the memory of the man who came, reluctant, almost afraid, to hear what she had to say to him. It was like a picture against the darkness of the room, — a darkness both physical and moral, which centred in the curtained gloom behind, about which two shadowy figures were busy. Often and with very different sentiments he saw this group again, but never wholly forgot it. or had it effaced from the depths of his memory.

“ Mr. Warrender,” she said, in a voice which was very low, yet he thought might have been heard all over the house, “ I want you to help me.”

“ Whatever I can do,” he began, with some fervor, for he was young, and his heart was touched.

“ I want,” she continued, “ to carry him home at once. I know it will not be easy, but it is night, and all is quiet. You are a man ; you will know better how it can be done. Manage it for me.”

Warrender was entirely unprepared for such a commission. “ There will be great difficulties, dear Lady Markland,” he said. “ It is a long way. I am sure my mother would not wish you to think of her. This is a house of death. Let him stay.”

She gave him a sort of smile, a softening of her stony face, and put out her hand to him. “ Do it for me,” she said. She was not at all moved by his objections, — perhaps she did not even hear them ; but when she had thus repeated her command, as a queen might have done, she turned back into the room, and sat down, to wait it seemed, until that command was accomplished. Warrender went away with a most perplexed and troubled mind. He was half pleased, underneath all, that she should have sent for him and charged him with this office, but bewildered with the extraordinary commission, and not knowing what to do.

“ What is it, Theo ? What did she want with you ? ” his sisters cried, in subdued voices, but eager to know everything about Lady Markland, who had been as the stars in the sky to them a little while before.

He told them in a few words, and they filled the air with whispered exclamations. " How odd, how strange; oh, how unusual, Theo ! People will say it is our doing. They will say, How dreadful of the Warrenders ! Oh, tell her you can’t do it! How could you do it, in the middle of the night ! ”

“ That is just what I don’t know,” Warrender rejoined.

“Mr. Theo,” said the old man, who was not dignified with the name of butler, “ the lady is quite right. I can’t tell you how it’s to be done, but gardener, he is a very handy man, and he will know. The middle of the night, — that’s just what makes it easy, young ladies; and instead o’ watching and waiting, the ‘holl of us ‘ull get to bed.”

“ That is all you ’re thinking of, Joseph.”

“ Well, it’s a deal, sir, after all that’s been going on in this house,” Joseph said, with an aggrieved air. He had to provide supper, which was a thing unknown at the Warren, after all the trouble that every one had been put to. He was himself of opinion that to be kept up beyond your usual hours, and subjected to unexpected fatigues, made “ a bit of supper ” needful even for the uncomfortable and incomprehensible people whom he called the quality. They were a poorish lot, and he had a mild contempt for them, and to get them supper was a hardship; still, it was his own suggestion, and he was bound to carry it out.

It is unnecessary to enter into all Warreuder’s perplexities and all the expedients that were suggested. At last the handy gardener and himself hit upon a plan by which Lady Markland’s wishes could be carried out. She sat still in the gloomy room where her husband lay dead, waiting till they should be ready ; doubting nothing, as little disturbed by any difficulty as if it had been the simplest commission in the world which she had given the young man. Geoff sat at her feet, leaning against her, holding her hand. It is to be supposed that he slept now and then, as the slow moments went on, hut whenever any one spoke to his mother his eyes would be seen gleaming against the darkness of her dress. They sat there waiting, perfectly still, with, the candles flickering faintly about the room in the night air that breathed in through the open windows. The dark curtains had been drawn round the bed. It was like a catafalque looming darkly behind. Mrs. Warrender bad used every persuasion to induce her guest to come into another room, to take something, to rest, to remember all that remained for her to do, and not waste her strength, — all those formulas which come naturally to the lips at such a moment. Lady Markland only answered with that movement of her face which was intended for a smile and a shake of her head.

At last the preparations were all complete. The night was even more exquisite than the evening had been; it was more still, every sound having died out of the earth except those which make up silence, — the rustling among the branches, the whirr of unseen insects, the falling of a leaf or a twig. The moon threw an unbroken light over the broad fields; the sky spread out all its stars, in myriads and myriads, faintly radiant, softened by the larger light; the air breathed a delicate, scarcely perceptible fragrance of growing grass, moist earth, and falling dew. How sweet, bow calm, how full of natural happiness.! Through this soft atmosphere and ethereal radiance a carriage made its way that was improvised with all the reverence and tenderness possible, in which lay the young man, dead, cut off in the very blossom and glory of his days, followed by another, in which sat the young woman who had been his wife. What she was thinking of who could tell ? Of their half-childish love and wooing, of the awaking of her own young soul to trouble and disappointment, of her manydreary days and years; or of the sudden severance, without a moment’s warning, without a leave-taking, a word, or a look? Perhaps all these things, now for a moment distinct, now mingling confusedly together, formed the current of her thoughts. The child, clasped in her arms, slept upon her shoulder; nature being too strong at last for that which was beyond nature, the identification of his childish soul with that of his mother. She was glad that he slept, and glad to be silent, alone, the soft air blowing in her face, the darkness encircling her like a veil.

Warrender went with this melancholy cortége, making its way slowly across the sleeping country. He saw everything done that could be done : the dead man laid on his own bed; the living woman, in whom he felt so much more interest, returned to the shelter of her home and the tendance of her own servants. His part in the whole matter was over when he stepped back into the brougham which she had left. The Warrenders had seen but little of the Marklands, though they were so near. The habits of the young lord bad naturally been little approved by Theo Warrender’s careful parents ; and his manners, when the young intellectualist from Oxford met him, were revolting at once to his good taste and good breeding. On the other hand, the Warrenders were but small people in comparison, and any intimacy with Lord and Lady Marklaud was almost impossible. It was considered by all the neighbors “ a great compliment ” when Lord Marklaud came to the funeral. Ah, poor Markland, had he not come to the funeral ! Yet how vain to say so, for his fate had been long prophesied, and what did it matter in what special circumstances it came to pass! But Warrender felt, as he left the house, that there could be no longer distance and partial acquaintance between the two families. Their lines of life — or was it of death ?— had crossed and been woven together. He felt a faint thrill go through him, — a thrill of consciousness, of anticipation, he could not tell what. Certainly it was not possible that the old blank of non-connection could ever exist again. She, to whom he had scarcely spoken before, who had been so entirely out of his sphere, had now come into it so strangely, so closely, that she could never he separated from his thoughts. She might break violently the visionary tie between them, — she might break it, angry to have been drawn into so close a relation to any strangers, — but it never could he shaken off.

He drove quickly down the long bare avenue, where all was so naked and clear, and put his head out of the carriage window to look back at. the house, standing out bare and defenseless in the full moonlight, showing faintly, through the white glory which blazed all around, a little pitiful glimmer of human lights in the closed windows, the watch-lights of the dead. It seemed a long time to the young man since in his own house these watch-lights had been extinguished. The previous event, seemed to have become dim to him, though he was so much more closely connected with it, in the presence of this, which was more awful, more terrible. He tried to return to the thoughts of the morning, when his father was naturally in all things his first occupation, but it was impossible to do it. Instead of the thoughts which became him, as now in his father’s place, with so much power, the fortunes of his family, so much depending upon him, all that 11is mind would follow were the events of this afternoon, so full of fate. He saw Lady Markland stand, with the child clinging to her, in the dim room, the shrouded bed and indistinct attendant figures behind, the dimly flickering lights. Why had she so claimed his aid, asked for his service, with that certainty of being obeyed? Her every word trembled in his ear still, — they were very few ; they seemed to be laid up there in some bidden repository, and came out and said themselves over again when lie willed, moving him as be never had been moved before. He made many efforts to throw off this involuntary preoccupation as the carriage rolled quickly along; the tired horse quickening its pace as it felt the attraction of home, the tired coachman letting it go almost at its own pleasure, the broad moonlight fields, with their dark fringes of hedge, spinning past. Then the village went past him, with all its sleeping houses, the church standing up like a protecting shadow. He looked out again at this, straining Ids eyes to see the dark spot where his father was lying, the first night in the bosom of the earth: and this thought brought him back for a moment to himself. But the next, as the carriage glided on into the shadow of the trees, and the overgrown copses of the Warren received him into their shadow, this other intrusive tragedy, this story which was not his, returned and took possession of him once more. To see her standing there, speaking so calmly, with the soft tones that perhaps would have been imperious in other circumstances: “Do it for me.” No question whether it could be done, or if be could do it. One thing only there was that jarred throughout all, — the child that was always there, forming part of her. “ If ever I have anything to do with that boy ” — Warrender said to himself; and then there was a moment of dazzle and giddiness, and the carriage stopped, and a door opened, and he found himself standing out in the fresh, soft night with his mother,on the threshold of his own home. There was a light in the hall behind her, where she stood, with the whiteness of the widow’s cap, which was still a novelty and strange feature in her, waiting till he should return. It was far on in the night, and except herself the household was asleep. She came out to him, wistfully looking in his face by the light of the moon.

“ You did everything for her, Theo ? ”

“ All that I could. I saw him laid upon his bed. There was nothing more for me to do.”

“ Are you very tired, my boy ? You have done so much.”

“ Not tired at all. Come out with me a little. I can’t go in yet. It is a lovely night.”

“ Oh, Theo, lovely and full of light! — the trees, and the bushes, and every blade of grass sheltering something that is living ; and yet death, death reigning in the midst.”

She leaned her head upon his arm and cried a little, but be did not make any response. It was true, no doubt, but other thoughts were in his mind.

“She will have great trouble with that child, when he grows up,” he said, as if he bad been carrying on some previous argument. “ It is ridiculous to have him always hanging about her, as if be could understand.”

Mrs. Warreuder started, and the movement made his arm which she held tremble, but he did not think what this meant. He thought she was tired, and this recalled his thoughts momentarily to her. “ Poor mother ! ” he said ; “you sat up for me, not thinking of your own fatigue and trouble, and you are overtired. Am I a trouble to you, too?” His mind was still occupied with the other train of thinking, even when he turned to subjects more his own.

“ Do you know,” she said, not caring to reply, “ it is the middle of the night?”

“ Yes, and you should be in bed. But I could n’t sleep. I have never had anything of the kind to do before, and it takes all desire to rest out of one. It will soon be daylight. I think I shall take my bath, and then get to work.”

“ Oh, no, Theo. You would not work, — you would think ; and there are some circumstances in which thinking is not desirable. Come out into the moonlight. We will take ten minutes, and then, my dear boy, good-night.”

“ Good-morning, you mean, mother, and everything new, — a new life. It has never been as it will he to-morrow. Have you thought of that? ” She gave a sudden pressure to his arm, and he perceived his folly. “ That I should speak so to you, to whom the greatest change of all has come ! ”

“ Yes,” she said, with a little tremor. “It is to me that it will make the most difference. And that poor young creature, so much younger than I, who might he my child ! ”

“ Do you think, when she gets over all this, that it will be much to her? People say ” —

“ That is a strange question to ask,” she said, with agitation, — “a very strange question to ask. When we get over all this, — that is, the shock, ami the change, and the awe of the going away, — what will it be then, to all of us? We shall just settle down once more into our ordinary life, as if nothing had happened. That is what will come of it. That is what always comes of it.

There is nothing but the common routine, which goes on and on forever.”

She was excited, and shed tears, at which he wondered a little, yet was compassionate of, remembering that she was a woman and worn out. He put his hand upon hers, which lay on his arm. “ Poor mother! ” he murmured, caressing her hand with his, and feeling all manner of tender cares for her awake in him. Then he added softly, returning in spite of himself toother thoughts, “ The force of habit and of the common routine, as you say, cannot be so strong when one is young.”

“ No,” she said ; and then, after a pause, “If it is poor Lady Marklaud you are thinking of, she has her child.”

This gave him a certain shock, in the softening of his heart. “The child is the thing I don’t like!” he exclaimed, almost sharply. Then he added, “ I think the dawn must be near; I feel very chilly. Mother, come in ; as you say, it is the best thing not to think, but to go to bed.”

VII.

The morning rose, as they had said to each other, upon a new life.

How strange it is to realize, after the first blow has fallen, that this changed life is still the same ! When it brings with it external changes, family convulsions, the alteration of external circumstances, although these secondary things increase the calamity, they give it also a certain natural atmosphere ; they are in painful harmony with it. But when the shock, the dreadful business of the moment, is all over, when the funeral has gone away from the doors and the dead has been buried, and everything goes on as before, this commonplace renewal is, perhaps, the most terrible of all to the visionary soul, Minnie and Chatty got out their work, — the colored work, which they had thought out of place during the first week. They went in the afternoon for a walk, and gathered fresh flowers, as they returned, for the vases in the drawing-room. When evening came they asked Theo if he would not read to them. It was not a novel they were reading; it was a biography, of a semi-religious character, in which there were a great many edifying letters. They would not, of course, have thought of reading a novel at such a time. Warrender had been wandering about all day, restless, not knowing what to do with himself. He was not given to games of any kind, but he thought to-day that he would have felt something of the sort a relief, though he knew it would have shocked the household. In the afternoon, on a chance suggestion of his mother’s, he saw that it was a sort of duty to walk over to Markland and ask how Lady Markland was. Twelve miles — six there and six back again — is a long walk for a student. He sent up his name, and asked whether he could be of any use, but he did not receive encouragement. Lady Markland sent her thanks, and was quite well (“she says,” the old butler explained, with a shake of the head, so that no one might believe he agreed in anything so unbecoming). The Honorable John had been telegraphed for, her husband’s uncle, and everything was being done; so that there was no need to trouble Mr. Warrender. He went back, scarcely solaced by his walk. He wanted to be doing something. Not Plato ; in the circumstances Plato did not answer at all. When he opened his book Ids thoughts escaped from bin;, and went off with a bound to matters entirely different. How was it possible that he could give that undivided attention which divine philosophy requires, the day after his father’s funeral, the first day of his independent life, the day after— That extraordinary postscript to the agitations of yesterday told, perhaps, most of all. When the girls asked him to read to them, opening the book at the page where they had left off, and preparing to tell him all that had gone before, so that he might understand the story (“ although there is very little story,” Minnie said, with satisfaction; “ chiefly thoughts upon serious subjects ”), he jumped up from his chair in almost fierce rebellion against that sway of the ordinary of which his mother had spoken. “ You were right,” he said to her; “the common routine is the thing that outlasts everything. I never thought of it before, but it is true.”

Mrs. Warrender, though she had herself been quivering with the long-concentrated impatience for which it seemed even now there could be no outlet, was troubled by her son’s outburst, and, afraid of what it might come to, felt herself moved to take the other side. “It is very true,” she said, faltering a little, “ but (he common routine is often best for everything, Theo. It is a kind of leading-string, which keeps us going.”

The girls looked up at Theo with alarm and wonder, but still they were not shocked at what he said. He was a man ; he had come to the Warren from those wild excitements of Oxford life, of which they had heard with awe ; they gazed at him, trying to understand him.

“ I have always heard,” said Minnie, “ that reading aloud was the most tranquilizing thing people could do. If we had each a book it would he unsociable; hut when a book is read aloud, then we are all thinking about the same thing, and it draws us together ; ” which was really the most sensible judgment that could have been delivered, had the two fantastic ones been in the mood to understand what was said.

Chatty did not say anything, but after she had threaded her needle looked up with great attention to see how the fate of the evening was to be decided. It was a great pleasure when some one would read aloud, especially Theo, who thus became one of them, in a way which was not at all usual; but perhaps she was less earnest about it this evening than on ordinary occasions, for the biographical book was a little dull, and the letters on serious subjects were dreadfully serious. No doubt, just after papa’s death, this was appropriate ; but still it is well known there are stories which are also serious, and could not do any one harm, even at the gravest moments.

“ There are times when leading-strings are insupportable,” Theo said ; “ at any time I don’t know that I put much faith in them. We have much to arrange anti settle, mother, if you feel able for it.”

“ Mamma can’t feel able yet,” returned Minnie. “Oh, why should we make any change ? We are so happy as we are.”

“ I am quite able,” said Mrs. Warrender. She had been schooling herself to the endurance which still seemed to be expected of her, but the moment an outlet seemed possible the light kindled in her eye. “ I think with Theo that it is far better to decide whatever has to be done at once.” Then she cried out suddenly, carried away by the unexpected, unhoped-for opportunity, “Oh, children, we must get away from here ! I cannot bear it any longer. As though all our own trouble and sorrow were not enough, this other — this other tragedy ! ” She put up her hands to her eyes, as though to shut out the sight that pressed upon them. “ I cannot get it out of my mind. I suppose my nerves and everything are wrong; all night long it seemed to be before me, — the blood on his forehead, the ghastly white face, the laboring breath. Oh, not like your father, who was good and old and peaceful,— who was just taken away gently, led away, — but so young and so unprepared ! Oh, so unprepared! What could God do with him, cut off in the midst of ” —

Minnie got up hastily, with her smelling-salts, which always lay on the table. “ Go and get her a glass of water, Theo,” she said authoritatively.

Mrs. Warrender laughed. It was a little nervous, but it was a laugh. It seemed to peal through the house, which still was a house of mourning, and filled the girls with a horror beyond words. She put out her hands to put their ministrations away. “ I do not want water,” she said, “ nor salts either. I am not going into hysterics. Sit down and listen to me. I cannot remain here. It is your birthplace, but not mine. I am dying for fresh air and the sight of the sun. If you are shocked, I cannot help it. Theo, when you go hack to Oxford I will go to — I don’t know where ; to some place where there is more air; but here I cannot stay.”

This statement was as a thunderbolt falling in the midst of them, and the poor woman perceived this on speaking. Her son’s impatience had been the spark which set the smouldering fire in her alight, but even he was astounded by the quick and sudden blaze which lit up the dull wonder in his sisters’faces. And then he no longer thought of going to Oxford. He wanted to remain to see if he could do anything, — perhaps to he of use. A husband’s uncle does not commend himself to one’s mind as a very devoted or useful ministrant. He would go away, of course, and then a man who was nearer, who was a neighbor, who had already been so mixed up with the tragedy, — this was what he had been thinking of; not of Oxford, or his work.

“ It is not worth while going back to Oxford,” he said ; “ the term is nearly over. You know I was there only for convenience, to read. One can read anywhere, at home as well as — I shall not go back at present.” He was not accustomed yet to so abrupt a declaration of his sentiments, and for the moment he avoided his mother’s eye.

Minnie went back to her seat, and put down the bottle of salts on the table, with an indignant jar. “ I am so glad that you feel so, Theo, too.”

Mrs. Warrender looked round upon her children with despairing eyes. They were all his children, — all Warrenders born; knowing as little about her and her ways of thinking as if she had been a stranger to them. She was indeed a stranger to them in the intimate sense. The exasperation that had been in her mind for years could be repressed no longer. “ If it is so,” she said, “ I don’t wish to interfere with your plans, Theo ; but I will go for — for a little change. I must have it. I am worn out.”

“ Oh, mamma, you will not surely go by yourself, without us ! How could you get on without us ! ” cried Chatty. She had perhaps, being the youngest, a faint stir of a feeling in her mind that a little change might be pleasant enough. But she took her mother at her word with this mild protest, which made Mrs, Warrender’s impatient cry into a statement of fixed resolution : and the others said nothing. Warrender was silent, because he was absorbed in the new thoughts that filled his mind ; Minnie, because, like Chatty, she felt quite apart from any such extraordinary wishes, having nothing to do with it, and she had nothing to say.

“ It will he very strange, certainly, for me to be alone,—very strange,” Mrs. Warrender said, with a quiver in her voice. “ It is so long since I have done anything by myself ; not since before you were all horn. But if it must be,” she added, “ I must just take courage as well as I can, and — go by myself, as you say.”

Once more there was no response. The girls did not know what to say. Duty, they thought, meant staying at home and doing their crewel-work; they were not capable of any other identification of it all at once. It was very strange, but if mamma thought so, what could they do ? She got up with nervous haste, feeling now, since she had once broken bounds, as though the flood of long-restrained feeling was beyond her control altogether. The natural thing would have been to rush upstairs and pack her things, and go off to the railway at once. That, perhaps, might not be practicable; but neither was it practicable to sit quietly amid the silence and surprise, and see her wild, sudden resolution accepted dully, as if a woman could contemplate such a severance calmly. And yet it was true that she must get fresh air or die. Life so long intolerable could be borne no longer.

I think in the mean time,” she said, with a forced smile, “ I shall go upstairs.”

“ You were up very late last night,” returned Theo, though rather by way of giving a sort of sanction to her abrupt withdrawal than for any other reason, as he rose to open the door.

“ Yes, it was very late. I think I am out of sorts altogether. And if I am to make my plans without any reference to the rest of the family ” —

“ Oh, that is absurd,” he said. “ Of course the girls must go with you, if you are really going. But you must not he in a hurry, mother. There is plenty of time; there is no hurry.” He was thinking of the time that must elapse before the doors of Markland would be open even to her who had received Lord Markland into her house. Till then he did not want her to go away. When she had left the room he turned upon his sisters and slew them.

“ What do you mean, you two ? I wonder if you have got hearts of stone, to hear the poor mother talk of going away for a little change, and to sit there like wooden images, and never open yonr mouths ! ”

The girls opened their mouths wide at this unexpected reproach. “ What could we say ? Mamma tells us all in a moment she wants to go away from home ! We have always been taught that a girl’s place is at home.”

“ What do you call home? ” he asked.

It was a brutal speech, he was aware. Brothers and sisters are permitted to be brutal to each other without much harm done. Minnie had begun calmly, with the usual, “ Oh, Theo ! ” before the meaning of the question struck her. She stopped suddenly, looked up at him, with eyes and lips open, with an astonished stare of inquiry. Then, dull though she was, growing red, repeated in a startled, awakened, interrogative tone, “Oh, Theo?” with a little gasp as for breath.

“ I don’t mean to be disagreeable,” he said. “ I never should have beeu, had not you begun. The mother has tried to make you understand half a dozen times, but I suppose you did not want to understand. Don’t you know everything is changed since — since I was last at the Warren ? Your home is with my mother now, wherever she chooses to settle down.”

It must be said for Warrender that he meant no harm whatever by this. He meant, perhaps, to punish them a little lor their heartlessuess. He meant them to see that their position was changed, — that they were not as of old, in assured possession ; and he reckoned upon that slowness of apprehension which probably would altogether preserve them from any painful consciousness. But it is astonishing how the mind and the senses are quickened when it is ourselves who are in question. Minnie was the leader of the two. She was the first to understand; and then it communicated itself partly by magnetism to Chatty, who woke up much more slowly, having caught as it were only an echo of what her brother said.

“ You mean — that this is not our home any more,” said Minnie. Her eyes filled with sudden tears, and her face was flushed with the shock. She had seldom looked so well, so thoroughly awakened and mistress of her faculties. When she was roused she had more in her than was apparent on the surface. “ I did not think you would be the one to tell us that. Of course we know that it is quite true. Chatty and I are older than you are, but we are only daughters, and you are the boy. You have the power to turn us out, — we all know that.”

“ Minnie ! ” cried Chatty, struck with terror, putting out a hand to stop these terrible words, — words such as bad never been said in her bearing before.

“ But we did not think you would have used it,” the elder sister said simply, and then was silent. He expected that she would end the scene hy rushing from the room in tears and wrath. But what she did was much more embarrassing. She dried her tears hastily, took up her crewel-work, sat still, and said no more. Chatty threw an indignant but yet at the same time an inquiring glance at him. She had not heard or observed the beginning of the fray, and did not feel quite sure what it was all about.

“ I am sure Theo would never do anything that was unkind,” she remarked mildly; then after a little pause, “ Would n’t it have been much better to have had the reading? I have noticed that before: when one reads and the others work, there is, as the rector says, a common interest, and vve have a nice evening; but when we begin talking instead — well, we think differently, and we disagree, and one says more than one means to say, and then — one is sorry afterwards,” Chatty said, after another pause.

On the whole, it was the girls who had the best of it in this encounter. It is impossible to say how much Theo was ashamed of himself when, after Chatty’s quite unaccustomed address, which surprised herself as much as her brother and sister, and after an hour of silence, broken by an occasional observation, the girls put aside their crewels again, and remarked that it was time to go to bed. A sense of opposition and that pride which prevents a man from being the first to retire from a battle-field, even when the battle is a failure and the main armies have never engaged, had kept him there during the evening, in spite of himself. But when they left him master of the ground, there can he no doubt that he felt much more like a defeated than a triumphant general. This first consequence of the new regime was not a beautiful or desirable one. There were thus three parties in the house on the evening of the first day of their changed existence : the mother, who was so anxious to leave the scene of her past existence behind her ; the girls, who clung to their home ; the brother, the master, who, half to show that he took his mother’s side, half out of instinctive assertion of himself, had let them know roundly that their home was theirs no longer. He was not proud of himself at all as he thought of what he had said ; hut yet when he recalled it he was not perhaps so sorry for having said it as he had been the minute after the words left his lips. It was better, possibly, as the lawyer, as the mother, as everybody, had said, that the true state of affairs should be fully understood from the first. The house was theirs no longer. The old reign and all its traditions had passed away; a new reign had begun. What that new reign might turn to, who might share it, what wonderful developments it might take, who could tell ?

His imagination here went away with a leap into realms of sheer romance, He seemed to see the old house transformed, the free air, the sweet sunshine pouring in, the homely rooms made beautiful, the inhabitants — What was he thinking of? Did ever imagination go so fast or so far? He stopped himself, with vague smiles stealing to his lips. All that enchanted ground was so new to him that he had no control over his fancy, but went to the utmost length with a leap of bewildering pleasure and daring almost like a child. Yet mingled with this were various elements which were not lovely. He was not, so far as had been previously apparent, selfish beyond the natural liking for his own comfort and his own way, which is almost universal. He had never wished to cut himself off from his family, or to please himself at their expense. But something had come into his mind which is nearer than the nearest, — something which, with a new and uncomprehended fire, hardens the heart on one side while melting it on the other, and brings tenderness undreamed of and cruelty impossible to he believed from the same source. He felt the conflict of these powers within him when he was left alone in the badly furnished, badly lighted drawing-room, which seemed to reproach him for the retirement of those well-known figures which had filled it with tranquil dullness for so many years, and never wished it different. With something of the same feeling towards the inanimate things about him which he had expressed to his sisters, he walked up and down the room. It too would have to change, like them, to acknowledge that he was master, to he moulded to new requirements. He felt as if the poor old ugly furniture, the hard curtains that hung like pieces of painted wood, the dingy pictures on the walls, contemplated him with panic and disapproval. They were easier to deal with than the human furniture ; but he had been accustomed to them all his life, and it was not without a sense of impiety that the young iconoclast contemplated these grim household gods, harmless victims of that future which as yet was but an audacious dream. He was standing in front of the great chiffonier, with its marble top and plateglass hack, looking with daring derision at its ugliness, when old Joseph came in at his usual hour — the hour at which he had fulfilled the same duty for the last twenty years — to put out the lamps. Warrender could horrify the girls and insult the poor old familiar furniture, but he was not yet sufficiently advanced to defy Joseph. He turned round, with a blush and quick movement of shame, as if he had been found out, at the appearance of the old man with his candle in his hand, and murmuring something about work hurried off to the library, with a fear that even that refuge might perhaps be closed upon him. Joseph remained master of the situation. He followed Warrender to the door with his eyes, with a slight contemptuous shrug of his shoulders, as at an unaccountable being whose “ways” were scarcely important enough to be taken into account, and trotted about, putting out one lamp after another, and the twinkling candles on the mantelpiece, and the little lights in the hall and corridor. It was an office Joseph liked. He stood for a moment at the foot of the hack stairs looking with complacency upon the darkness, his candle lighting up his little old wry face. But when his eye caught the line of light under the library door, Joseph shook his head. He had put the house to bed without disturbance for so long: he could not abide, he said to himself, this introduction of new ways.

M. O. W. Oliphant.