"That is very good of you not to mind," said his mistress, laughing.
"Light it, then, it will make us more cheerful before we go."

"Ah, Joseph," said the rector's wife, "you may well be kind to your good
old mistress, who has always been so considerate to you. For new lords,
new laws, you know, and when the new lady comes----"

Joseph, who was on his knees lighting the fire, turned round with the
freedom of an old servant. "There ain't no new ladies but in folks'
imagination," he said. "The Warren ain't a place for nothing new."

"Joseph!" cried his mistress sharply; but she was glad of the assistance
thus afforded to her. And there was a little interval during which Mrs.
Wilberforce was occupied with her tea. She was cold and damp, and the
steaming cup was pleasant to see; but she was not to be kept in silence
even by this much-needed refreshment. "I should think," she resumed,
"that the boy would be the chief difficulty. A step-mother is a difficult
position; but a step-father, and one so young as dear Theo!"

"Step-fathering succeeds better than step-mothering," said the rector,
"so far as my experience goes. Men, my dear, are not so exacting; they
are more easily satisfied."

"What nonsense, Herbert! They are not brought so much in contact with
the children, perhaps, you mean; they are not called on to interfere so
much. But how a mother could trust her children's future to a second
husband---- For my part I would rather die."

"Let us hope you will never need to do so, my dear," said the rector, at
which little pleasantry Mrs. Warrender was glad to laugh.

"Happily none of us are in danger," she said. "Chatty must take the
warning to heart and beware of fascinating widowers. Is it true about
the Elms--that the house is empty and every one gone?"

"Thank heaven! it is quite true; gone like a bubble burst, clean swept
out, and not a vestige left."

"As every such place must go sooner or later," said Mrs. Wilberforce.
"That sort of thing may last for a time, but sooner or later----"

"I think," said the rector, "that our friend Cavendish had, perhaps,
something to do with it. It appears that it is an uncle of his who bought
the house when it was sold three years ago, and these people wanted
something done to the drainage, I suppose. I advised Dick to persuade
his uncle to do nothing, hoping that the nuisance--for, I suppose,
however wicked you are, you may have a nose like other people--might
drive them out; and so it has done apparently," Mr. Wilberforce said,
with some complacency, looking like a man who deserved well of his kind.

"They might have caught fever, too, like other people. I wonder if that
is moral, to neglect the drains of the wicked?"

"No," said Mrs. Wilberforce firmly; "they have not noses like other
people. How should they, people living in that way? The sense of smell
is essentially a belonging of the better classes. Servants never smell
anything. We all know that. My cook sniffs and looks me in the face and
says, 'I don't get anything, m'm,' when it is enough to knock you down!
And persons of _that_ description living in the midst of every evil--!
Not that I believe in all that fuss about drains," she added, after a
moment. "We never had any drains in the old times, and who ever heard of
typhoid fever _then_?"

"But if they had been made very ill?" said Chatty, who, up to this time,
had not spoken. "I don't think surely Mr. Cavendish would have done
that."

She was a little moved by this new view. Chatty was not interested in
general about what was said, but now and then a personal question would
rouse her. She thought of the woman with the blue eyes, so wide open
and red with crying, and then of Dick with his laugh which it always
made her cheerful to think of. Chatty had in her mind no possible
link of connection between these two: but the absence of any power of
comprehending the abstract in her made her lay hold all the more keenly
of the personal, and the thought of Dick in the act of letting in
poisonous gases upon that unhappy creature filled her with horror. She
was indignant at so false an accusation. "Mr. Cavendish," she repeated
with a little energy, "never would have done that."

"It is all a freak of those scientific men," said Mrs. Wilberforce.
"Look at the poor people, they can do a great deal more, and support a
great deal more, than we can: yet they live among bad smells. I think
they rather like them. I am sure my nursery is on my mind night and day,
if there is the least little whiff of anything; but the children are as
strong as little ponies--and where is the drainage there?"

With this triumphant argument she suddenly rose, declaring that she knew
the brougham was at the door, and that Mrs. Warrender would be late for
the train. She kissed and blessed both the ladies as she took leave of
them. "Come back soon, and don't forget us," she said to Chatty; while
to Mrs. Warrender she gave a little friendly pat on the shoulder. "You
won't say anything, not even to true friends like Herbert and me? but a
secret like that can't be kept, and though you mayn't think so,
everybody knows."

"Do you think that is true, mamma?" Chatty asked when the wet umbrellas
had again gone glimmering through the shrubberies and under the trees,
and the travellers were left alone.

"That everybody knows? It is very likely. There is no such thing as a
secret in a little world like ours; everybody knows everything. But
still they cannot say that they have it by authority from you and me. It
is time enough to talk of it when it is a fact, if it is to be."

"But you have not any doubt of it, mamma?"

"I have doubt of everything till it is done; even," she said, with a
smile as the wheels of the brougham cut the gravel and came round with a
little commotion to the door, "of our going away: though I allow that it
seems very like it now."

They did go away, at last, leaving the Warren very solitary, damp, and
gray, under the rain,--a melancholy place enough for Theo to return to.
But he was not in a state of mind to think of that or of any of his home
surroundings grave or gay. Chatty put her head out of the window to
look behind her at the melancholy yet dear old house, with tears in her
innocent eyes, but Mrs. Warrender, feeling that at last she had shaken
herself free from that bondage, notwithstanding the anxiety in her heart
for her son, had no feeling to spare for the leave-taking. She waved her
hand to Mrs. Bagley at the shop, who was standing out at her door with a
shawl over her cap to see the ladies go by. Lizzie stood behind her in
the doorway saying nothing, while her grandmother curtsied and waved her
hand and called out her wishes for a good journey, and a happy return.
Naturally Chatty's eyes sought those of the girl, who looked after her
with a sort of blank longing as if she too would fain have gone out into
the world. Lizzie's eyes seemed to pursue her as they drove past,--poor
Lizzie, who had other things in her mind, Chatty began to think, beside
the fashion books; and then there came the tall red mass of the Elms,
with all its windows shut up, and that air of mystery which its encircling
wall and still more its recent history conferred upon it. The two ladies
looked out upon it, as they drove past, almost with awe.

"Mamma," said Chatty, "I never told you. I saw the--the lady, just when
she was going away."

"What lady?" asked Mrs. Warrender, with surprise.

"I don't think," said Chatty, with a certain solemnity, "that she was
any older, perhaps not so old as I. It made my heart sick. Oh, dear
mother, must there not be some explanation, some dreadful, dreadful
fate, when it happens that one so young----"

"Sometimes it may be so--but these are mysteries which you, at your age,
Chatty, have no need to go into."

"At my age--which is about the same as hers," said Chatty; "and--oh,
mamma, I wanted in my heart to stop her, to bring her to you. She had
been crying--she had such innocent-looking, distracted eyes--and Lizzie
said----"

"Lizzie! what had Lizzie to do with it?"

"I promised to tell no one, but you are not any one, you are the same
as myself. Lizzie says she knew her long ago, that she is the same as
a child still, not responsible for what she is doing--fond of toys and
sweets like a child."

"My dear, I am sorry that Lizzie should have kept up such a friend. I
believe there are some poor souls that if an innocent girl were to do
what you say, stop them and bring them to her mother, might be saved,
Chatty. I do believe that: but not--not that kind."

The tears by this time were falling fast from Chatty's eyes. "I wonder,"
she said, "if I shall ever see her again."

"Never, I hope; for you could do nothing for her. Shut the window, my
dear, the rain is coming in. Poor Theo, how wet he will get coming home!
I wonder if he will have the thought to change everything now that there
is no occasion to dress, now that we are away."

"Joseph will give him no peace till he does," said Chatty, happily
diverted, as her mother had intended, from sadder thoughts. "And don't
you think she will make him stay to dinner on such a day? Don't you
think she must care a great deal for him, mamma?"

"She must care for him or she would not have listened to him. Poor
Theo!" said the mother, with a sigh.

"But he cares very much for her: and he is happy," said Chatty, with a
certain timidity, a half question; for to her inexperience there were
very serious drawbacks, though perhaps not such as might have occurred
to a more reasonable person. Mrs. Warrender had to change this subject,
too, which Chatty showed a disposition to push too far, by making an
inquiry into the number of their bags and parcels, and reminding her
daughter that they were drawing near the station. It was a very forlorn
little station, wet and dismal, with a few men lounging about, the
collars of their coats up to their ears, and Mrs. Warrender's maid
standing by her pile of boxes, having arrived before them. It had been
an event long looked for, much talked of, of late, but it was not a
cheerful going away.

But the rain had gone off by the time they reached town, and a June day
has a power of recovering itself, such as youth only possesses. But no,
that is an error, as Mrs. Warrender proved. She had been leaning back
in her corner very quiet, saying little, yet with an intense sense of
relief and deliverance. She came in to London with as delightful a
consciousness of novelty and freedom as any boy coming to seek his
fortune. Chatty's feelings were all very mild in comparison with her
mother's. She was greatly pleased to see the clouds clear off, and the
humid sweetness of the skies, which even the breath of the great city
did not obscure. "After all, Theo will have a nice evening for his drive
home," she said, unexcited. Though it was all very agreeable, Chatty
did not know of anything that might await her in town. She knew more or
less, she believed, what awaited her,--a few parties, a play or two,
the Row in the morning, the pictures, a pleasant little glimpse of the
outside of that fashionable life which was said to be "such a whirl,"
which she had no expectation, nor any desire to see much of. There was
no likelihood that she and her mother would be drawn into that whirl. If
all the people they knew asked them to dinner, or even to a dance, which
was not to be thought of, there would still be no extravagant gaiety in
that. Driving from the railway to Half Moon Street was as pleasant as
anything--to a girl of very highly raised expectations, it might have
been the best of all: but Chatty did not anticipate too much, and would
not be easily disappointed. She neither expected nor was afraid of any
great thing that might be coming to her. Her quiet heart seemed beyond
the reach of any touch of fate.

CHAPTER XXX.

On the mantelpiece of the little lodging-house drawing-room in Half Moon
Street, supported against the gilt group that decorated the timepiece,
was a note containing an invitation. "Why, here is the whirl beginning
already," Mrs. Warrender said. "Don't you feel that you are in the vortex,
Chatty?" Her mother laughed, but was a little excited even by this mild
matter; but Chatty did not feel any excitement. To the elder woman, the
mere sense of the population about her, the hurry in the street, the
commotion in the air, was an excitement. She would have liked to go
out at once, to walk about, to get into a hansom like a man, and drive
through the streets, and see the lights and the glimmer of the shops,
and the crowds of people. To be within reach of all that movement and
rapidity went into her veins like wine. After the solitude and silence
of so many years,--nothing but the rustle of the leaves, the patter
of the rain, the birds or the winds in the branches, and the measured
voices indoors, to vary the quiet,--the roar of Piccadilly mingling with
everything was a sort of music to this woman. To many others, perhaps
the majority, the birds and breezes would be the thing to long for; but
Mrs. Warrender was one of the people who love a town and all that seems
like a larger life in the collection together of many human lives. Whether
it is so or not is another question, or if the massing together of a
multitude of littles ever can make a greatness. It seems to do so, which
is enough for most people; and though the accustomed soul is aware that
no desert can be more lone than London, to the unaccustomed its very
murmur sounds like a general consent of humanity to go forth and do
more than in any other circumstances. It is the constitution of the ear
which determines what it hears. For Chatty took the commotion rather the
other way. She said, "One can't hear one's self speak," and wanted to
close the windows. But Mrs. Warrender liked the very noise.

The dinner to which they were invited was in Curzon Street, in a house
which was small in reality, but made the most of every inch of its space,
and which was clothed and curtained and decorated in a manner which made
the country people open their eyes. The party was very small, their
hostess said; but it would have been a large party at the Warren, where
all the rooms were twice as big. Chatty was a little fluttered by her
first party in London; but this did not appear in her aspect, which was
always composed and simple, not demanding any one's regard, yet giving
to people who were _blase_ or tired of much attraction (as sometimes
happens) a sense of repose and relief. She must have been more excited,
however, than was at all usual with her; for though she thought she
had remarked everybody in the dim drawing-room,--where the ladies in
their pretty toilets and the men in their black coats stood about in a
perplexing manner, chiefly against the light, which made it difficult to
distinguish them, instead of sitting down all round the room, which in
the country would have seemed the natural way,--it proved that there was
one very startling exception, one individual, at least, whom she had not
remarked. She went down to dinner with a gentleman, whose name of course
she did not make out, and whose appearance, she thought, was exactly the
same as that of half the gentlemen in the procession down the narrow
staircase. Chatty, indeed, made disparaging reflections to herself as to
society in general, on this score; the thought flashing through her mind
that in the country there was more difference between even one curate
and another (usually considered the most indistinguishable class), than
between these men of Mayfair. She was a little bewildered, too, by the
appearance of the dining-room, for at that period the _diner a la Russe_
was just beginning to establish itself in England, and a thicket of
flowers upon the table was novel to Chatty, filling her first with
admiration, then with a little doubt whether it would not be better to
see the people more distinctly on the other side. Dinner had gone on a
little way, and her companion had begun to put the usual questions to
her about where she had been, and where she was going, questions to
which Chatty, who had been nowhere, and had not as yet one other
invitation (which feels a little humiliating when you hear of all the
great things that are going on), could make but little reply, when in
one of the pauses of the conversation, she was suddenly aware of a
laugh, which made her start slightly, and opened up an entirely new
interest in this as yet not very exciting company. It was like the
opening of a window to Chatty, it seemed to let in pure air, new light.
And yet it was only a laugh, no more. She looked about her with a little
eagerness: and then it was that she began to find the flowers and the
ferns, which had filled her with enthusiasm a moment before, to be
rather in the way.

"I suppose you go to the Row every morning," said her entertainer.
"Don't you find that always the first thought when one comes to town?
You ride, of course. Oh, why not in the Row? there is nothing alarming
about it. A little practice, that is all that is wanted; to know how to
keep your horse in hand. But you hunt? then you are all right----"

"Oh no, we never hunted." It struck Chatty with a little surprise to be
talked to as if she had a stud at her command. Should she tell him that
this was a mistake; that there were only two horses beside Theo's, and
that Minnie and she had once had a pony between them--which was very
different from hunting, or having nerve to ride in the Row? Chatty found
afterwards that horses and carriages, and unbounded opportunities for
amusing yourself, and a familiar acquaintance with the entire peerage,
were always taken for granted in conversation whenever you dined out;
but at first she was unacquainted with this peculiarity and did not feel
quite easy in her mind about allowing it to be supposed that she was so
much greater a person. Her little hesitations, however, as to how she
should reply and the pauses she made when she heard that laugh arrested
the current of her companion's talk, and made it necessary for her, to
her own alarm, to originate a small observation which, as often happens
to a shy speaker, occurred just at the time when there was a momentary
lull in the general talk. What she said was, "Do you ride often in
the Row?" in a voice which though very soft was quite audible. Chatty
retired into herself with the sensation of having said something very
ridiculous when she caught a glance or two of amusement, and heard a
suppressed titter from somebody on the other side of the fashionable
young man to whom she had addressed this very innocent question. She
thought it was at her they were laughing, whereas the fact was that
Chatty was supposed by those who heard her to be a satirist of more
than usual audacity, putting a coxcomb to deserved but ruthless shame.
Naturally she knew nothing of this, and blushed crimson at her evidently
foolish remark, and retired in great confusion into herself, not conscious
even of the stumbling reply. She was almost immediately conscious,
however, of a face which suddenly appeared on the other side of the
table round the corner of a bouquet of waving ferns, lit up with smiles
of pleasure and eager recognition. "Oh, Mr. Cavendish! then it was you,"
she said, unawares; but the tumult of the conversation had arisen again,
and it seemed very doubtful whether her exclamation could have reached
his ear.

When the gentlemen came upstairs, Chatty endeavoured to be looking very
naturally the other way; not to look as if she expected him; but Dick
found his way to her immediately. "I can't think how I missed you
before. I should have tried hard for the pleasure of taking you down,
had I known you were here," he said, with that look of interest which
was the natural expression in his eyes when he addressed a woman. "When
did you come to town, and where are you? I do not know anything that has
been going on, I have heard nothing of you all for so long. There must
be quite a budget of news."

Chatty faltered a little, feeling that Mr. Cavendish had never been
so intimate in the family as these questions seemed to imply. "The
Wilberforces were quite well when we left," she said, with the honesty
of her nature, for to be sure it was the Wilberforces rather than the
Warrenders who were his friends.

"Oh, never mind the Wilberforces," he said, "tell me something about
you."

"There is something to tell about us, for a wonder," said Chatty. "My
sister Minnie is married: but perhaps you would hear of that."

"I think I saw it in the papers, and was very glad----" here he stopped
and did not finish his sentence. A more experienced person than Chatty
would have perceived that he meant to express his satisfaction that it
was not she: but Chatty had no such insight.

"Yes, he has a curacy quite close, for the time: and he will have an
excellent living, and it is a very nice marriage. We came to town for a
little change, mamma and I."

"That is delightful news. And Theo? I have not heard from Theo for ages.
Is he left behind by himself?"

"Oh! Theo is very well. Theo is---- Oh, I did not mean to say anything
about that."

Chatty did not know why she was so completely off her guard with Dick
Cavendish. She had almost told him everything before she was aware.

"Not in any trouble, I hope. Don't let me put indiscreet questions."

"It is not that. There is nothing indiscreet, only I forgot that we had
not meant to say anything."

"I am so very sorry," cried Cavendish. "You must not think I would ask
anything you don't wish to tell me."

"But I should like to tell you," said Chatty, "only I don't know what
mamma will say. I will tell her it came out before I knew: and you must
not say anything about it, Mr. Cavendish."

"Not a syllable, not even to your mother. It shall be something between
you and me."

The way in which this was said made Chatty's eyes droop for a moment:
but what a pleasure it was to tell him! She could not understand herself.
She was not given to chatter about what happened in the family, and Dick
was not so intimate with Theo that he had a right to know; but still it
was delightful to tell him. "We don't know whether to be glad or sorry,"
she said. "It is that perhaps Theo, after a while, is going to marry."

"That is always interesting," said Dick; but he took the revelation
calmly. "What a lucky fellow! No need to wait upon fortune like the rest
of us. To marry--whom? Do I know the lady? I hope she is all that can be
desired."

"Oh, Mr. Cavendish, that is just the question. There is mamma coming,
perhaps she will tell you herself, which would be so much better than if
you heard it from me."

Mrs. Warrender came up at this moment very glad to see him, and quite
willing to disclose their number in Half Moon Street, and to grant a
gracious permission that he should call and be "of use," as he offered
to be. "I am not a gentleman at large, like Warrender, I am a toiling
slave, spending all my time in Lincoln's Inn. But in the evening I can
spare a little time--and occasionally at other moments," he added, with
a laugh, "when I try. A sufficient motive is the great thing. And of
course you will want to go to the play, and the opera, and all that is
going on."

"Not too much," said Mrs. Warrender. "The air of London is almost enough
at first, but come, and we shall see."

She said nothing, however, about Theo, nor was there any chance of saying
more. But when Cavendish took Chatty downstairs to put her in the
carriage (only a cab, but that is natural to country people in town),
he hazarded a whisper as they went downstairs, "Remember there is still
something to tell me." "Oh yes," she replied, "but mamma herself, I am
sure----" "No," he said, "she has nothing to do with it. It is between
you and me." This little conference made her wonderfully bright and
smiling when she took her place beside her mother. She did not say
anything for a time, but when the cab turned into Piccadilly, with its
long lines of lights,--an illumination which is not very magnificent
now, and was still less magnificent then, but very new and fine to
Chatty, accustomed to little more guidance through the dark than
that which is given by the light of a lantern or the oil lamp in Mrs.
Bagley's shop,--she suddenly said, "Well! London is very pleasant,"
as if that was a fact of which she was the first discoverer.

"Is it not?" said her mother, who was far more disinterested and had not
had her judgment biassed by any whisper on the stairs. "I am very glad
that you like it, Chatty. That will make my pleasure complete."

"Oh, who could help liking it, mamma?" She blushed a little as she
said this, but the night was kind and covered it; and how could Mrs.
Warrender divine that this gentle enthusiasm related to the discovery of
what Chatty called a friend among so many strangers, and not to the mere
locality in which this meeting had taken place? Who could help liking
it? To be talked to _like that_, with eyes that said more than even the
words, with that sudden look of pleasure, with the delightful little
mystery of a special confidence between them, and with the prospect of
meetings hereafter,--who could tell how many?--of going to the play.
Chatty laughed under her breath with pleasure, at the thought. It was a
most admirable idea to come to London. After all, whatever Minnie might
say, there was nobody for understanding how to make people happy like
mamma!

Dick's sensations were not so innocent nor so sweet. He walked home to
his chambers, smoking his cigar, and chewing the cud of fancy, which was
more bitter than sweet. What right had he to bend over that simple girl,
to lay himself out to please her, to speak low in her ear? Dick knew
unfortunately too well what was apt to come of such a beginning. Without
being more of a coxcomb than was inevitable, he was aware that he had a
way of pleasing women. And he had a perception that Chatty was ready to
be pleased, and that he himself wished--oh, very much, if he dared--to
please her. In these circumstances it was perfectly evident that he
should peremptorily take himself out of all possibility of seeing Chatty.
But this was utterly contrary to the way in which he had greeted her,
and in which he had immediately flung himself into the affairs of the
family. It was his occupation while he walked home to defend and excuse
himself for this to himself. In the first place, which was perfectly
true, he had not known at all that the Warrenders were to be of the
party; he had thus fallen into the snare quite innocently, without any
fault of his. Had he known, he might have found an excuse and kept away.
But then he asked himself, why in the name of heaven should he have kept
away? Was he so captivating a person that it would be dangerous to Miss
Warrender to meet him--once; or such a fool as to be unable to meet a
young lady whom he admired--once: without harm coming to it? To be sure
he had gone farther: he had thrown himself, as it were, at the feet of
the ladies, with enthusiasm, and had made absurd offers of himself to be
"of use." There could be no doubt that in the circumstances this was
mad enough, and culpable too; but it was done without premeditation, by
impulse, as he was too apt to act, especially in such matters; and it
could be put a stop to. He was pledged to call, it was true; but that
might be once, and no more. And then there was the play, the opera, to
which he had pledged himself to attend them; once there could not do
much harm, either. Indeed, so long as he kept, which he ought to do
always, full control over himself, what harm could it at all do to be
civil to Theo Warrender's mother and sister, who were, so to speak,
after a sort, old friends? He was not such an ass (he said to himself)
as to think that Chatty was at his disposal if he should lift up his
finger; and there was her mother to take care of her; and they were not
people to be asking each other what he "meant," as two experienced women
of society might do. Both mother and daughter were very innocent; they
would not think he meant anything except kindness. And if he could not
take care of himself, it was a pity! Thus in the course of his reflections
Dick found means to persuade himself that there was nothing culpable in
pursuing the way which was pleasant, which he wanted to pursue; a result
which unfortunately very often follows upon reflection. The best way
in such an emergency is not to reflect, but to turn and fly at once.
But that, he said to himself, not without some complaisance, would be
impulse, which he had just concluded to be a very bad thing. It was
impulse which had got him into the scrape, he must trust to something
more stable to get him out.

In the course of his walking, and, indeed, before these thoughts had
gone very far, he found himself at the corner of Half Moon Street, and
turned along with the simple purpose of seeing which was No. 22. There
were lights in several windows, and he lingered a moment wondering
which might be Chatty's. Then with a stamp of his foot, and a laugh of
utter self-ridicule, which astounded the passing cabmen (for in any
circumstances he was not surely such a confounded sentimental ass as
_that_), he turned on his heel and went straight home without lingering
anywhere. It was hard upon him that he should be such a fool; that he
should not be able to restrain himself from making idiotic advances,
which he could never follow out, and for a mere impulse place himself at
the mercy of fate! But he would not be led by impulse now in turning his
back. It should be reason that should be his guide; reason and
reflection and a calm working out of the problem, how far and no farther
he could with safety go.

And yet if it had been so that he could have availed himself of the
anxiety of his family to get "a nice girl" to take an interest in him!
Where could there be a nicer girl than Chatty? There were prettier girls,
and as for beauty, that was not a thing to be spoken of at all in the
matter. Beauty is rare, and it is often (in Dick's opinion) attended by
qualities not so agreeable. It was often inanimate, he thought, apt to
rest upon its natural laurels, to think it did enough when it consented
to look beautiful. He did not go in, himself, for the sublime. But to
see the light come over Chatty's face as if the sun had suddenly broken
out in the sky; to see the pleased surprise in her eyes as she lifted
them quickly, without any affectation, in all the sweetness of nature.
She was not clever either; all that she said was very simple. She was
easily pleased, not looking out for wit as some girls do, or insisting
upon much brilliancy in conversation. In short, if he had been writing
a poem or a song about her (with much secret derision he recognised that
to be the sort of thing of which in the circumstances foolish persons
were capable), the chief thing that it occurred to him any one could
say would be that she was Chatty. And quite enough too! he added, to
himself, with a curious warmth under his waistcoat, which was pleasant.
Wasn't there a song that went like that? Though this was fair, and that
was something else, and a third was so-and-so, yet none of them was Mary
Something-or-other. He was aware that the verse was not very correctly
quoted, but that was the gist of it; and a very sensible fellow, too,
was the man who wrote it, whoever he might be.

With this admirable conclusion, showing how much reason and reflection
had done for him, Dick Cavendish wound up the evening--and naturally
called at 22 Half Moon Street next day.

CHAPTER XXXI.

Dick Cavendish called at Half Moon Street next day: and found the ladies
just returned from a walk, and a little tired and very glad to see a
friendly face, which his was in the most eminent degree. They had been
out shopping, that inevitable occupation of women, and they had been
making calls, and informing their few acquaintances of their arrival.
Mrs. Benson, at whose house the dinner had been, was one of the few old
friends with whom Mrs. Warrender was in habits of correspondence, and
thus had known of their coming beforehand. Dick found himself received
with the greatest cordiality by Mrs. Warrender, and by Chatty with an
air of modest satisfaction which was very sweet. Then Mrs. Warrender
was desirous to have a little guidance in their movements, and took so
sincerely his offer to be of use that Dick found no means at all of
getting out of it. Indeed, when it came to that, he was by no means so
sure that it was so necessary to get out of it, as when he had begun his
reflections on the subject. He even proposed--why not?--that they should
all go to the play that very evening, there being nothing else on hand.
In those days the theatre was not so popular an institution as at present,
and it was not necessary to engage places for weeks in advance. This
sudden rush, however, was too much for the inexperienced country lady.
"We are not going to be so prodigal as that," she said, "it would
deprive us of all the pleasure of thinking about it; and as everything
is more delightful in anticipation than in reality----"

"Oh, mamma!" said Chatty, shocked by this pessimistic view.

"And what am I to do with myself all the evening?" said Dick, with mock
dismay, "after anticipating this pleasure all day? If anticipation is
the best part of it, you will allow that disappointment after is
doubly----"

"If you have nothing better to do, stay and dine with us," Mrs. Warrender
said. This proposal made Chatty look up with pleasure, and then look
down again lest she should show, more than was expedient, how glad she
was. And Dick, who had reflected and decided that to call once and to go
to the theatre once could do no harm, accepted with enthusiasm, without
even pausing to ask himself whether to dine with them once might be
added without further harm to his roll of permissions. The dinner was a
very commonplace, lodging-house dinner, and Chatty got out her muslin
work afterwards, and had a quiet industrious evening, very much like
her evenings at home. She was like a picture of domestic happiness
impersonified, as she sat in the light of the lamp with her head bent,
the movement of her arm making a soft rustle as she worked. She wore a
muslin gown after the fashion of the time, which was not in itself a
beautiful fashion, but pretty enough for the moment, and her hair, which
was light brown, fell in little curls over her soft cheek. She looked
up now and then, while the others talked, turning from one to another,
sometimes saying a word, most frequently giving only a smile or look of
assent. Let us talk as we will of highly educated women and of mental
equality and a great many other fine things: but as a matter of fact,
this gentle auditor and sympathiser, intelligent enough to understand
without taking much part, is a more largely accepted symbol of what the
woman ought to be, than anything more prominent and individual. Just so
Eve sat and listened when Adam discoursed with the angel, putting by
in her mind various questions to ask when that celestial but rather
long-winded visitor was gone. Perhaps this picture is not quite harmonious
with the few facts in our possession in respect to our first mother,
and does scant justice to that original-minded woman: but the type has
seized hold upon the imagination of mankind. Dick thought of it vaguely,
as he looked (having secured a position in which he could do so without
observation) at this impersonation of the woman's part. He thought if
another fellow should look in for a talk, which was his irreverent way
of describing to himself the visit of the angel, it would be highly
agreeable to have her there listening, and to clear up the knotty points
for her when they should be alone. He had little doubt that Eve would
have an opinion of her own, very favourable to _his_ way of stating the
subject, and would not mind criticising the other fellow, with a keen
eye for any little point of possible ridicule. He kept thinking this as
he talked to Mrs. Warrender, and also that the little cluster of curls
was pretty, and the bend of her head, and, indeed, everything about her;
not striking, perhaps, or out of the common, but most soothing and
sweet.

And next evening, having had those pleasures of anticipation which Mrs.
Warrender thought so much of, he went with them to the play, and spent
an exceedingly pleasant evening, pointing out such people as he knew
(who were anybody) to Mrs. Warrender between the acts, and enjoying
the sight of Chatty's absorption in the play, which made it twice as
interesting to himself. The play was one in which there was a great deal
of pretty love-making along with melodramatic situations of an exciting
kind. The actors, except one, were not of sufficient reputation to
interest any reader save those with a special inclination to the study
of the stage. But though the performance was not on the very highest
level, there was a great deal in it that thrilled this young man and
woman sitting next to each other, and already vaguely inclined towards
each other in that first chapter of mutual attraction which is, perhaps,
in its vagueness and irresponsibility, the most delightful of all. Dick
would have laughed at the idea of feeling himself somehow mixed up
with the lover on the stage, who was not only a good actor, but a much
handsomer fellow than he was; but Chatty had no such feeling, and with a
blush and quiver felt herself wooed in that romantic wooing, with a half
sense that the lights should be lowered and nobody should see, and at
the same time an enchantment in the sight which only that sense of a
personal share in it could have given.

After this beginning Dick's reflections went to the wind.

He felt injured when he found that, not knowing their other friends in
town, he had no invitation to accompany them, when those persons did
their duty by their country acquaintances, and asked them, one to
dinner, another--oh, happiness to Chatty--to a dance. But it did not
turn out unmingled happiness for Chatty after all, though she got a new
dress for it, in which she looked prettier (her mother thought, who was
no flattering mother) than she had ever done in her life. Mrs. Warrender
saw the awakening in Chatty's face which gave to her simple good looks a
something higher, a touch of finer development; but the mother neither
deceived herself as to the cause of this, nor was at all alarmed by it.
Dick was a quite suitable match for Chatty; he was well connected, he
was not poor, he was taking up his profession, if somewhat late, yet
with good prospects. If there had been escapades in his youth, these
were happily over, and as his wild oats had been sown on the other side
of the Atlantic, no one knew anything about them. Why, then, should she
be alarmed to see that Chatty opened like a flower to the rising of this
light which in Dick, too, was so evident as to be unmistakable? In such
circumstances as these the course of true love would be the better of a
little obstacle or two; the only difficulty was that it might run too
smooth. Mrs. Warrender thought that, perhaps, it was well to permit
such a little fret in the current as this dance proved to be. She could
have got Dick an invitation had she pleased, but was hard-hearted and
refrained. And Chatty did not enjoy it. She said (with truth) that there
was very little room for dancing; that to sit outside upon the stairs
with a gentleman you didn't know, among a great many other girls and men
whom you didn't know, was not her idea of a hall; and that if this was
the London way, she liked a dance in the country much better. The time
when she did enjoy it was next day, when she gave her impressions of
it to Dick, who exulted as having not been there secretly over Mrs.
Warrender, who would not have him asked. Chatty grew witty in the
excitement of her little revenge on society, and on fate which had
drifted her into that strange country, without the ever-ready aid to
which she had grown accustomed of "some one she knew." "Yes, I danced,"
she said, "now and then, as much as we could. It was not Lady Ascot's
fault, mamma; she introduced a great many gentlemen to me, but sometimes
I could not catch their names, and when I did, how was I to remember
which was Mr. Herbert and which was Mr. Sidney, when I had never seen
either of them before? and gentlemen," she said, with a little glance
(almost saucy: Chatty had developed so much) at Dick, "are so like each
other in London."

At which Dick laughed, not without, gratification, with a secret
consciousness that though this little arrow was apparently levelled at
him, he was the exception to the rule, the one man who was recognisable
in any crowd. "Yes," he said, "we should wear little labels with our
names. I have heard that suggested before."

"They put down initials on my programme. I don't know what half of them
mean: and I suppose they came and looked for me when the dance was going
to begin, or perhaps in the middle of the dance, or towards the end;
they didn't seem to be very particular," proceeded Chatty, with a certain
exhilaration in the success of her description. "And how were they to
find me among such a lot of girls? I saw two or three prowling about
looking for me."

"And never made the smallest sign?"

"Oh, it is not the right thing for a girl to make any sign, is it,
mamma? One can't say, Here I am! If they don't manage to find you, you
must just put up with it, though you may see them prowling all the time.
It is tiresome when you want very much to dance; but when you are
indifferent----"

"The pleasures of society are all for the indifferent," said Dick;
"everything comes to you, so the wise people say, when you don't care
for it: but my brothers, who are dancing men, don't know how malicious
ladies are, who make fun of their prowling. I shall remember it next
time when I can't find my partner, and imagine her laughing at me in a
corner."

"The amusement is after," said Chatty, with candour.

"I think it funny now when I think of it, but it seemed stupid at the
time. I don't think I shall care to go to a dance in London again."

But as she said these words there escaped a mutual glance from two pairs
of eyes, one of which said in the twitching of an eyelash, "Unless I am
there!" while the other, taken unawares, gave an answer in a soft flash,
"Ah, if you were there!" But there was nothing said: and Mrs. Warrender,
though full of observation, never noticed this telegraphic, or shall we
say heliographic, communication at all.

This little hindrance only made them better friends. They made expeditions
to Richmond, where Dick took the ladies out on the river; to Windsor and
Eton, where Theo and he had both been to school. Long before now he had
been told the secret about Theo, which in the meantime had become less
and less of a secret, though even now it was not formally made known.
Lady Markland! Dick had been startled by the news, though he declared
afterwards that he could not tell why: for that it was the most natural
thing in the world. Had not they been thrown together in all kinds of
ways; had not Theo been inevitably brought into her society, almost
compelled to see her constantly?

"The compulsion was of his own making," Mrs. Warrender said. "Perhaps
Lady Markland, with more experience, should have perceived what it was
leading to."

"It is so difficult to tell what anything is leading to, especially in
such matters. What may be but a mutual attraction one day becomes a bond
that never can be broken the next."

Dick's voice changed while he was speaking. Perhaps he was not aware
himself of the additional gravity in it, but his audience was instantly
aware of it. That was the evening they had gone to Richmond; the softest
summer evening, twilight just falling; Chatty, very silent, absorbed (as
appeared) in the responsibilities of steering; the conversation going on
entirely between her mother and Dick, who sat facing them, pulling long,
slow, meditative strokes. Even when one is absorbed by the responsibilities
of the steerage, one can enter into all the lights and shades of a
conversation kept up by two other people, almost better than they can do
themselves.

"That is true in some cases. Not in Theo's, I think. It seems to me that
he gave himself over from the first. I am not sure that I think her a
very attractive woman."

"Oh yes, mamma!" from Chatty, in an undertone.

"I am not talking of looks. She has a good deal of power about her, she
will not be easily swayed; and after having suffered a great deal in her
first marriage I think she has very quickly developed the power of acting
for herself which some women never attain."

"So much the better," said Dick. "Theo doesn't want a puppet of a wife."

"But he wants a wife who will give in to him," said Mrs. Warrender
slightly shaking her head.

"I suppose we all do that, in theory: then glide into domestic servitude
and like it, and find it the best for us."

"Let us hope you will do that," she said, with a smile; "but not Theo, I
fear. He has been used to be made much of. The only boy, they say, is
always spoiled. You have brothers, Mr. Cavendish,--and he has a temper
which is a little difficult."

"Oh, mamma," from Chatty again. "Theo is always kind."

"That does not make much difference, my dear. When a young man is
accustomed to be given in to, it is easy to be kind. But when he meets
for the first time one who will not give in, who will hold her own--I do
not blame her for that: she is in a different position from a young
girl."

"And how is it all to be settled?" asked Dick; "where are they to live?
how about the child?"

"All these questions make my heart sink. He is not in the least prepared
to meet them. Her name even; she will of course keep her name."

"That always seems a little absurd; that a woman should keep her own
name, as they do more or less everywhere but in England--yes; well, a
Frenchwoman says _nee_ So-and-so; an Italian does something still more
distinct than that, I am not quite clear how she does it. That's quite
reasonable I think: for why should she wipe out her own individuality
altogether when she marries? But to keep one husband's name when you are
married to another----"

"It is because of the charm of the title. I suppose when a woman has
been once called my lady, she objects to come down from those heights.
But I think if I were a man, I should not like it, and Theo will not
like it. At the same time there is her son, you know, to be considered.
I don't like complications in marriages. They bring enough trouble
without that."

"Trouble!" said Dick, in a tone of lively protest, which was a little
fictitious. And Chatty, though she did not say anything, gave her mother
a glance.

"Yes, trouble. It breaks as many ties as it makes. How much shall I see
of Theo, do you think, when this marriage takes place? and yet by nature
you would say I had some right to him. Oh, I do not complain. It is
the course of nature. And Minnie is gone; she is entering into all the
interests of the Thynnes, by this time: and a most bigoted Thynne she
will be, if there are any special opinions in the family. I don't know
them well enough to know. Fancy giving up one's child to become bigoted
to another family, whom one doesn't even know!"

"It seems a little hard, certainly. The ordinary view is that mothers
are happy when their daughters marry."

"Which is also true in its way: for the mother has a way of being older
than her daughter, Mr. Cavendish, and knows she cannot live for ever;
beside, marriage being the best thing for a woman, as most people think,
it should be the mother's duty to do everything she can to secure it for
her daughter. Yes, I go as far as that--in words," Mrs. Warrender added,
with a little laugh.

"But not for her son?"

"I don't say that: no, not at all. I should rejoice in Theo's marriage,
but for the complications, which I think he is not the right person to
get through, with comfort. You, now, I think," she added, cheerfully,
"might marry Lady----Anybody, with a family of children, and make it
succeed."

"Thank you very much for the compliment. I don't mean to try that mode
of success," he said quickly.

"Neither did Theo mean it until he was brought in contact with Lady
Markland: and who can tell but you too--Oh yes, marriage almost always
makes trouble; it breaks as well as unites; it is very serious; it is
like the measles when it gets into a family." Mrs. Warrender felt that
the conversation was getting much too significant, and broke off with a
laugh. "The evening is delightful, but I think we should turn homewards.
It will be quite late before we get back to town."

Dick obeyed without the protest he would have made half an hour before.
He resumed the talk when he was walking up with the ladies to the hotel,
where they had left their carriage. "One laughs, I don't know why," he
said, "but it is very serious in a number of ways. A man when he is in
love doesn't ask himself whether he's the sort of man to make a girl
happy. There are some things, you know, which a man has to give up too.
Generally, if he hesitates, it seems a sort of treason; and often he
cannot tell the reason why. Now Theo will have a number of sacrifices to
make."

"He is like Jacob, he will think nothing of them for the love he bears
to Rachel," said Theo's mother. "I wish that were all."

"But I wish I could make you see it from a man's point of view." Dick
did not himself know what he meant by this confused speech. He wanted to
make some sort of plea for himself, but how, or in what words, he did
not know. She paused for a moment expecting more, and Chatty, on the
other side of her mother, felt a little puncture of pain, she could
scarcely tell why. "There are some things which a man has to give up
too." What did he mean by that? A little vague offence which flew
away, a little pain which did not, a sort of needle point, which she
kept feeling all the rest of the evening, came to Chatty from this
conversation. And Mrs. Warrender paused, thinking he was going to
say more. But he said no more, and when he had handed them into the
carriage, broke out into an entirely new subject, and was very gay and
amusing all the way home.

The two ladies did not say a syllable to each other on this subject,
neither had they said anything to each other about Dick, generally,
except that he was very nice, that it was kind of him to take so much
trouble, and so forth. Whether experienced mothers do discuss with their
daughters what So-and-so meant, or whether he meant anything, as Dick
supposed, is a question I am not prepared to enter into. But Mrs.
Warrender had said nothing to Chatty on the subject, and did not now:
though it cannot be said that she did not ponder it much in her heart.

CHAPTER XXXII.

The ladies were in town three weeks, which brought them from June into
July, when London began to grow hot and dusty, and the season to approach
its close. They were just about to leave town, though whether to
continue their dissipations by going to the seaside, or to return to
Highcombe and put their future residence in order, they had not as yet
made up their minds. Cavendish gave his vote for the seaside. "Of course
you mean to consult me, and give great weight to my opinion," he said.
"What I advise is the sea, and I will tell you why: I am obliged to go
to Portsmouth about some business. If you were at the Isle of Wight,
say, or Southsea----"

"That would be very pleasant: but we must not allow ourselves to be
tempted, not even by your company," said Mrs. Warrender, who began to
fear there might be enough of this. "We are going home to set our house
in order, and to see if, perhaps, Theo has need of us. And then the
Thynnes are coming home."

"Is it Miss Warrender who has developed into the Thynnes?"

"Indeed it is; that is how everybody inquires for her now. I have got
quite used to the name. That is one of the drawbacks of marrying one's
daughters, which I was telling you of. One's Minnie becomes in a moment
the Eustace Thynnes!"

They were not a smiling party that evening, and Mrs. Warrender's little
pleasantry fell flat. It flew, perhaps, across the mind of all, that
Chatty might be changed, in a similar way, into the Cavendishes. Dick
grew hot and cold when the suggestion flashed through him. Then it
was that he recollected how guilty he had been, and how little his
reflections had served him. He who had determined to call but once,
to go with them once to the play, had carried out his resolution so
far that the once had been always. And now the time of recompense was
coming. The fool's paradise was to be emptied of its tenants. He went
away very gloomy, asking himself many troubled questions. It was not
that he had been unaware, as time went on, what it was that went along
with it,--a whole little drama of simple pleasure, of days and evenings
spent together, of talks and expeditions. Innocent? Ah, more than
innocent, the best and sweetest thing in his life, if---- But that
little monosyllable makes all the difference. It was coming to an end
now, they were going away; and Dick had to let them go, without any
conclusion to this pretty play in which he had played his part so
successfully. Oh, he was not the first man who had done it! not the
first who had worn a lover's looks and used all a lover's assiduities,
and then--nothing more. Perhaps that was one of the worst features in
his behaviour to himself. To think that he should be classed with the
men who are said to have been amusing themselves! and Chatty placed
in the position of the victim, on whose behalf people were sorry or
indignant! When he thought that there were some who might presume to
pity her, and who would say of himself that he had behaved ill, the
shock came upon him with as much force as if he had never thought of it
before; although he had thought of it, and reflected upon how to draw
out of the intercourse which was so pleasant, before he gave himself up
to it, with an abandon which he could not account for, which seemed now
like desperation. Desperation was no excuse. He saw the guilt of it
fully, without self-deception, only when he had done all the harm
that was possible, had yielded to every temptation, and now found it
impossible to go any further. To repent in these circumstances is not
uncommon; there is nothing original in it. Thousands of men have done
it before him,--repented when they could sin no more. For a moment it
flashed across his mind to go and throw himself on Mrs. Warrender's
mercy and tell her all, and make what miserable excuse he could for
himself. Was it better to do that, to part for ever from Chatty, or to
let them think badly of him, to have it supposed that he had trifled or
amused himself, or whatever miserable words the gossips chose to use,
and yet leave a door open by which he might some time, perhaps, approach
her again? Some time! after she had forgotten him, after his unworthiness
had been proved to her, and some other fellow, some happier man who had
never been exposed to such a fate as had fallen upon him, some smug
Pharisee (this fling at the supposed rival of the future was very natural
and harmed nobody) had cut him out of all place in her heart! It was so
likely that Chatty would go on waiting for him, thinking of him, for
years perhaps, the coxcomb that he was!

"I said very suddenly that we must go home," said Mrs. Warrender, after
he had left them. "You did not think me hard, Chatty? It seemed to me
the best."

"Oh no, mamma," said Chatty, with a slight faltering.

"We have seen a great deal of Mr. Cavendish, and he has been very nice,
but I did not like the idea of going to the Isle of Wight."

"Oh no, mamma," Chatty repeated, with more firmness. "I did not wish it
at all."

"I am very glad you think with me, my dear. He has been very nice; he
has made us enjoy our time in town much more than we should have done.
But of course, that cannot last for ever, and I do really think now that
we should go home."

"I have always thought so," said Chatty. She was rather pale, and there
was a sort of new-born dignity about her, with which her mother felt
that she was unacquainted. "It has been very pleasant, but I am quite
ready. And then Minnie will be coming back as you said."

"Yes." Then Mrs. Warrender burst into a laugh which might as well have
been a fit of crying. "But you must prepare yourself to see not Minnie,
but the Eustace Thynnes," she said. And then the mother and daughter
kissed each other and retired to their respective rooms, where Chatty
was a long time going to bed. She sat and thought, with her pretty hair
about her shoulders, going over a great many things, recalling a great
many simple little scenes and words said,--which were but words after
all,--and then of a sudden the tears came, and she sat and cried very
quietly, even in her solitude making as little fuss as possible, with an
ache of wonder at the trouble that had come upon her, and a keen pang of
shame at the thought that she had expected more than was coming, more
perhaps than had ever been intended. A man is not ashamed of loving when
he is not loved, however angry he may be with himself or the woman who
has beguiled him; but the sharpest smart in a girl's heart is the shame
of having given what was not asked for, what was not wanted. When those
tears had relieved her heart, Chatty put up her hair very neatly for the
night, just as she always did, and after a while slept,--much better
than Dick.

He came next day, however, for a final visit, and the day after to see
them away, without any apparent breach in the confidence and friendship
with which they regarded each other. There might be, perhaps, a faint
almost imperceptible difference in Chatty, a little dignity like that
which her mother had discovered in her, something that was not altogether
the simple girl, younger than her years, whom Mrs. Warrender had brought
to town. On the very last morning of all, Dick had also a look which was
not very easy to be interpreted. While they were on their way to the
station he began suddenly to talk of Underwood and the Wilberforces, as
if he had forgotten them all this time, and now suddenly remembered that
there were such people in the world. "Did I ever tell you," he said,
"that one of the houses in the parish belongs to an uncle of mine, who
bought it merely as an investment, and let it?"

"We were talking of that," said Mrs. Warrender. "Mr. Wilberforce hoped
you had persuaded your uncle to leave the drainage alone in order to
make a nuisance and drive undesirable tenants away."

He laughed in a hurried, breathless way, then said quickly, "Is it true
that the people who were there are gone?"

"Quite true. They seem to have melted away without any one knowing, in a
single night They were not desirable people."

"So I heard: and gone without leaving any sign?"

"Have they not paid their rent?" said Mrs. Warrender.

"Oh, I don't mean to say that. I know nothing about that. My uncle----"
and here he stopped, with an embarrassment which, though Mrs. Warrender
was an unsuspicious woman, attracted her notice. "I mean," said Cavendish,
perceiving this, and putting force upon himself, "he will of course be
glad to get rid of people who apparently could do his property no good."

And after this his spirits seemed to rise a little. He told them that
he had some friends near Highcombe, who sometimes in the autumn offered
him a few days' shooting. If he got such an invitation this autumn
might he come? "It is quite a handy distance from London, just the
Saturday-to-Monday distance," he added, looking at Mrs. Warrender with
an expression which meant a great deal, which had in it a question, a
supplication. And she was so imprudent a woman! and no shadow of Minnie
at hand to restrain her. It was on her very lips to give the invitation
he asked. Some good angel of a class corresponding in the celestial
world to that of Minnie in this, only stopped her in time, and gave a
little obliqueness to the response.

"I hope we shall see you often," she said, which was pleasant but
discouraging, and then began to talk about the Eustace Thynnes, who were
at present of great use to her as a diversion to any more embarrassing
subject of conversation. Chatty scarcely spoke during this drive, which
seemed to her the last they should take together. The streets flying
behind them, the scenes of the brief drama falling back into distance,
the tranquillity of home before, and all this exciting episode of life
becoming as if it had never been, occupied her mind. She had settled all
that in her evening meditation. It was all over; this was what she said
to herself. She must not allow even to her own heart any thought of
renewal, any idea that the break was temporary. Chatty was aware that
she had received all his overtures, all his amiabilities (which was
what it seemed to come to) with great and unconcealed pleasure. To think
that he had nothing but civility in his mind all the time gave a blow to
her pride, which was mortal. She did not wear her pride upon her sleeve,
though she had worn her heart upon it. Her nature indeed was full of
the truest humility; but there was a latent pride which, when it was
reached, vibrated through all her being. No more, she was saying to
herself. Oh, never more. She had been deceived, though most likely he
had never wished to deceive her. It was she who had deceived herself;
but that was not possible, ever again.

"We have not thanked you half enough," said Mrs. Warrender, as he stood
at the door of the railway carriage. "I will tell Theo that you have
been everything to us. If you are as good to all the mothers and sisters
of all your old schoolfellows----"

"You do me a great wrong," he said, "as if I thought of you as the
mother of----" His eyes strayed to Chatty, who met them with a smile
which was quite steady. She was a little pale, but that was all. "Some
time," he added hastily, holding Mrs. Warrender's hand, "I may be able
to explain myself a little better than that."

"Shall I say if you are as kind to all forlorn ladies astray in London?"

Dick's face clouded over as if (she thought) he were about to cry. Men
don't cry in England, but there is a kind of mortification, humiliation,
a sense of being persistently misunderstood, and of having no possibility
of mending matters, which is so insupportable that the lip must quiver
under it, even when garnished with a moustache. "I hope you don't really
think that of me," he cried. "Don't! there is no time to tell you how
very different--But surely you know--something more than that----"

The train was in motion already and Chatty had shaken hands with
him before. She received the last look of his eyes, half indignant,
appealing, though in words it was to her mother he was speaking; but
made no sign. And it was only Mrs. Warrender who looked out of the
window and waved her hand to him, as he was left behind. Chatty--Chatty
who was so gentle, so little apt to take anything upon her, even to
judge for herself, was it possible that on this point she was less
soft-hearted than her mother? This thought went through him like an
arrow as he stood and saw the carriages glide away in a long curving
line. She was gone and he was left behind. She was gone, was it in
resentment, was it in disdain? thinking of him in his true aspect as
a false lover, believing him to have worn a false semblance, justly
despising him for an attempt to play upon her. Was this possible? He
thought (with that oblique sort of literary tendency of his) of Hamlet
with the recorder. Can you play upon this pipe?--and yet you think you
can play upon me! As a matter of fact there could nothing have been
found in heaven or earth less like Hamlet than Chatty Warrender; but
a lover has strange misperceptions. The steady soft glance, the faint
smile, not like the usual warm beaming of her simple face, seemed to
him to express a faculty of seeing through and through him which is not
always given to the greatest philosophers. And he stood there humiliated
to the very dust by this mild creature, whom he had loved in spite of
himself, to whom even in loving her he had attributed no higher gifts,
perhaps had even been tenderly disrespectful of as not clever. Was she
the one to see through him now?

If she only knew! but when Dick, feeling sadly injured and wounded, came
to this thought, it so stung him that he turned round on the moment, and,
neglecting all the seductions of waiting cabmen, walked quickly, furiously,
to Lincoln's Inn, which he had been sadly neglecting. If she knew
everything! it appeared to Dick that Chatty's clear dove's eyes (to
which he all at once had attributed an insight and perception altogether
above them) would slay him with the disdainful dart which pierces through
and through subterfuge and falsehood. That he should have ventured,
knowing what he knew, to approach her at all with the semblance of love:
that he should have dared,--oh, he knew, well he knew, how, once the
light of clear truth was let down upon it, his conduct would appear,--not
the mere trifler who had amused himself and meant no more, not the fool
of society, who made a woman think he loved her, and "behaved badly,"
and left her _plante la_. What were these contemptible images to the
truth! He shrank into himself as he pursued these thoughts and skulked
along. He felt like a man exposed and ashamed, a man whom true men would
avoid. "Put in every honest hand a whip,"--ah no, that was not wanted.
Chatty's eyes, dove's eyes, too gentle to wound, eyes that knew not how
to look unkindly, to conceal a sentiment, to veil a falsehood--one look
from Chatty's eyes would be enough.

Chatty knew nothing of the tragic terror which had come upon him at
the mere apprehension of this look of hers. She had no thought of any
tragedy, except that unknown to men which often becomes the central fact
in a life such as hers; the tragedy of an unfinished chapter in life,
the no-ending of an episode which had promised to be the drama in which
almost every human creature figures herself (or himself) as the chief
actor, one time or other. The drama indeed had existed, it had run
almost all its course, for the time it lasted it had been more absorbing
than anything else in the world. The greatest historical events beside
it had been but secondary. Big London, the greatest city in the world,
had served only as a little bosquet of evergreens in a village garden
might have done, as the background and scene for it. But it had no end;
the time of the action was accomplished, the curtain had fallen, and
the lights had been put out, but the comedy had come to no conclusion.
Comedy-tragedy; it does not matter much which words you use. The scenes
had all died away in incompleteness, and there had been no end. To many
a gentle life such as that of Chatty might be, this is all that ever
happens beyond the level of the ordinary and common. It was with a touch
of insight altogether beyond her usual intellectual capacity that she
realised this as she travelled very quietly with her mother from London
to Highcombe, not a very long way. Mrs. Warrender was very silent too.
She had meant the visit to town to be one of pleasure merely,--pleasure
for herself, change after the long monotony, and pleasure to her child
who had never known anything but that monotony. It was not, this little
epoch of time only three weeks long, to count for anything. It was
to be a holiday and no more. And lo! with that inexplicableness, that
unforeseenness which is so curious a quality of human life, it had
become a turning point of existence, the pivot perhaps upon which
Chatty's being might hang. Mrs. Warrender was not so decided as Chatty.
She saw nothing final in the parting. She was able to imagine that
secondary causes, something about money, some family arrangements that
would have to be made, had prevented any further step on Dick's part.
To her the drama indeed was not ended: the curtain had only fallen
legitimately upon the first act without prejudice to those which were to
follow. She did not talk, for Chatty's silence, her unusual dignity, her
retirement into herself, had produced a great effect upon her mother;
but her mind was not moved as Chatty's was, and she was able to think
with pleasure of the new home awaiting them, and of what they were to find
there. The Eustace Thynnes! she said to herself, with a laugh, thanking
Providence within herself that there had been no Minnie to inspect the
progress of the relations between Dick and Chatty, and probably to deliver
her opinion very freely on that subject and on her mother's responsibility.
Then there was the more serious chapter of Theo and his affairs which
must have progressed in the meantime. Mrs. Warrender caught herself up
with a little fright as she thought of the agitation and doubt which
wrapped the future of both her children. It was a wonderful relief to
turn to the only point from which there was any amusement to be had, the
visit of the Eustace Thynnes.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

The return of the Warrenders to their home was not the usual calm
delight of settling again into one's well-known place. The house at
Highcombe was altogether new to their experiences, and meant a life in
every way different, as well as different surroundings. It was a tall
red brick house, with a flight of steps up to the door, and lines of
small, straight, twinkling windows facing immediately into the street,
between which and the house there was no interval even of a grass plot
or area. The garden extended to the right with a long stretch of high
wall, but the house had been built at a period when people had less
objection to a street than in later times. The rooms within were of a
good size but not very high; some of them were panelled to the ceiling
with an old-fashioned idea of comfort and warmth. The drawing-room
was one of these, a large oblong room to the front with a smaller one
divided from it by folding-doors, which looked out upon the garden. It
possessed, as its great distinction, a pretty marble mantelpiece, which
some one of a previous generation had brought from Italy. It is sad to
be obliged to confess that the panelling here had been painted, a warm
white, like the colour of a French salon, with old and dim pictures of
no particular merit let in here and there,--pictures which would have
been more in keeping with the oak of the original than with the present
colour of the walls. The house had been built by a Warrender, in the end
of the seventeenth century, and though it had been occupied by strangers
often, and let to all sorts of people, a considerable amount of the
furniture, and all the decorations, still belonged to that period. The
time had not come for the due appreciation of these relics of ancestral
taste. Chatty thought them all old-fashioned, and would gladly have
replaced them by fresh chairs and tables from the upholsterers: but
this was an expense not to be thought of, and, perhaps, even to eyes
untrained in any rules of art, there was something harmonious in the
combination. Something harmonious, too, with Chatty's feelings was in
the air of old tranquillity and long established use and wont. The
stillness of the house was as the stillness of ages. Human creatures
had come and gone, as the days went and came, sunshine coming in at one
moment, darkness falling the next, nothing altering the calm routine,
the established order. Pains and fevers and heartbreaks, and death
itself, would disappear and leave no sign, and all remain the same
in the quaint rose-scented room. The quiet overawed Chatty, and yet
was congenial. She felt herself to have come "home" to it, with all
illusions over. It was not just an ordinary coming back after a
holiday,--it was a return, a settling down for life.

It would be difficult to explain how it was that this conviction had
taken hold of her so strongly. It was but a month since she had left the
Warren with her mother, with some gentle anticipations of pleasure, but
none that were exaggerated or excessive. All that was likely to happen,
as far as she knew, was that dinner party at Mrs. Benson's, and a play
or two, and a problematical hall. This was all that the "vortex" meant
about which her mother had laughed; she had not any idea at that time
that the vortex would mean Dick Cavendish. But now that she fully
understood what it meant, and now that it was all over, and her agitated
little bark had come out of it, and had got upon the smooth calm waters
again, there had come to Chatty a very different conception both of the
present and the past. All the old quiet routine of existence seemed to
her now a preface to that moment of real life. She had been working up
to it vaguely without knowing it. And now it had ended, and this was the
Afterwards. She had come back--after. These words had to her an absolute
meaning. Perhaps it was want of imagination which made it so impossible
for her to carry forward her thoughts to any possible repetition, any
sequel of what had been; or perhaps some communication, unspoken,
unintended, from the mind of Cavendish had affected hers and given a
certainty of conclusion, of the impossibility of further development.
However that might be, her mind was entirely made up on this subject.
She had lived (for three weeks), and it was over. And now existence was
all Afterwards. She found scarcely any time for her habitual occupations
while she was in London, but now there would be time for everything.
Afterwards is long, when one is only twenty-four, and it requires a
great deal of muslin work and benevolence to fill it up in a way that
will be satisfactory to the soul; but still, to ladies in the country it
is a very well known state, and has to be faced, and lived through all
the same. To a great many people life is all afternoon, though not in
the sense imagined by the poet: not the lotus-eating drowsiness and
content, but a course of little hours that lead to nothing, that have
no particular motive except that mild duty which means doing enough
trimming for your new set of petticoats and carrying a pudding or a
little port wine to the poor girl who is in a consumption in the lane
behind your house. This was the Afterwards of Chatty's time, and she
settled down to it, knowing it to be the course of nature. Nowadays,
matters have improved: there is always lawn tennis and often ambulance
lectures, and far more active parish work. But even in those passive
days it could be supported, and Chatty made up her mind to it with a
great, but silent courage. But it made her very quiet, she who was
quiet by nature. The land where it is always afternoon chills at first
and subdues all lively sentiments. The sense of having no particular
interest, took possession of her mind as if it had been an absorbing
interest, and drew a veil between her and the other concerns of life.

This was not at all the case with Mrs. Warrender, who came home with all
the agreeable sensations of a new beginning, ready to take up new lines
of existence, and to make a cheerful centre of life for herself and all
who surrounded her. If any woman should feel with justice that she has
reached the Afterwards, and has done with her active career, it should
be the woman who has just settled down after her husband's death to
the humbler house provided for her widowhood apart from all her old
occupations and responsibilities. But in reality there was no such
sentiment in her mind. "You'll in your girls again be courted." She had
hanging about her the pleasant reflection of that wooing, never put into
words, with which Dick Cavendish had filled the atmosphere, and which
had produced upon the chief object of it so very different an effect;
and she had the less pleasurable excitement of Theo's circumstances, and
of all that was going on at Markland, a romance in which her interest
was almost painful, to stimulate her thoughts. The Eustace Thynnes did
not count for much, for their love-making had been very mild and regular,
but still, perhaps, they aided in the general quickening of life. She
had three different histories thus going on around her, and she was
placed in a new atmosphere, in which she had to play a part of her own.
When Chatty and she sat down together in the new drawing-room for the
first time with their work and their plans, Mrs. Warrender's talk was of
their new neighbours and the capabilities of the place. "The rector is
not a stupid man," she said, in a reflective tone. The proposition was
one which gently startled Chatty. She lifted her mild eyes from her
work, with a surprised look.

"It would be very sad for us if he was stupid," she said.

"And Mrs. Barham still less so. What I am thinking of is society,
not edification. Then there is Colonel Travers, whom we used to see
occasionally at home, the brother, you know, of ----. An old soldier is
always a pleasant element in a little place. The majority will of course
be women like ourselves, Chatty."

"Yes, mamma, there are always a great many ladies about Highcombe."

Mrs. Warrender gave forth a little sigh. "In a country neighbourhood we
swamp everything," she said; "it is a pity. Too many people of one class
are always monotonous: but we must struggle against it, Chatty."

"Dear mamma, isn't ladies' society the best for us? Minnie always said
so. She said it was a dreadful thing for a girl to think of gentlemen."

"Minnie always was an oracle. To think of gentlemen whom you were likely
to fall in love with, and marry, perhaps--but I don't think there are
many of that class here."

"Oh no," said Chatty, returning to her work, "at least I hope not."

"I am not at all of your opinion, my dear. I should like a number of
them; and nice girls too. I should not wish to keep all these dangerous
personages for you."

"Mamma!" said Chatty, with a soft reproachful glance. It seemed a
desecration to her to think that ever again--that ever another----

"That gives a little zest to all the middle-aged talks. It amuses other
people to see a little romance going on. You were always rather shocked
at your light-minded mother, Chatty."

"Mamma! it might be perhaps very sad for--for those most concerned,
though it amused you."

"I hope not, my darling. You take things too seriously. There is, to be
sure, a painful story now and then, but very rarely. You must not think
that men are deceivers ever, as the song says."

"Oh no," said Chatty, elevating her head with simple pride, though
without meeting her mother's eyes, "that is not what I would say. But
why talk of such things at all? why put romances, as you call them, into
people's heads? People may be kind and friendly without anything more."

Mrs. Warrender here paused to study the gentle countenance which was
half hidden from her, bending over the muslin work, and for the first
time gained a little glimpse into what was going on in Chatty's heart.
The mother had long known that her own being was an undiscovered country
for her children; but it was new to her and a startling discovery that
perhaps this innocent creature, so close to her, had also a little
sanctuary of her own, into which the eyes most near to her had never
looked. She marked the little signs of meaning quite unusual to her
composed and gentle child--the slight quiver which was in Chatty's
bent head, the determined devotion to her work which kept her face
unseen--with a curious confusion in her mind. She had felt sure that
Dick Cavendish had made a difference in life to Chatty; but she had
not thought of this in any but a hopeful and cheerful way. She was more
startled now than she dared say. Had there been any explanation between
them which she had not been told of? Was there any obstacle she did not
know? Her mind was thrown into great bewilderment, too great to permit
of any exercise of her judgment suddenly upon the little mystery--if
mystery there was.

"I did not mean to enter into such deep questions," she said, in a tone
which she felt to be apologetic. "I meant only a little society to keep
us going. Though we did not go out very much in London, still there was
just enough to make the blank more evident if we see nobody here."

Chatty's heart protested against this view: for her part she would have
liked that life which had lasted three weeks to remain as it was, unlike
anything else in her experience, a thing which was over, and could return
no more. Had she not been saying to herself that all that remained to her
was the Afterwards, the long gray twilight upon which no other sun would
rise? In her lack of imagination, the only imagination she had known
became more absolute than any reality, a thing which once left behind
would never be renewed again. She felt a certain scorn of the attempt to
make feeble imitations of it, or even to make up for that light which
never was on sea or shore, by any little artificial illuminations. A
sort of gentle fury, a wild passion of resistance, rose within her at
the thought of making up for it. She did not wish to make up for it: the
blank could not be made less evident whatever any one might do or say.
But all this Chatty shut up in her own heart. She made no reply, but
bent her head more and more over her muslin work, and worked faster and
faster, with the tears collecting, which she never would consent to
shed, hot and salt behind her eyes.

Mrs. Warrender was silent too. She was confounded by the new phase
of feeling, imperfectly revealed to her, and filled with wonder, and
self-reproach, and sympathy. Had she been to blame to leave her child
exposed to an influence which had proved too much for her peace of
mind?--that was the well-worn conventional phrase, and it was the only
one that seemed to answer the occasion, too much for her peace of mind!
The mother, casting stealthy glances at her daughter, so sedulously,
nervously busy, could only grope at a comprehension of what was in
Chatty's mind. She thought it was the uncertainty, the excitement of
suspense, and all that feverish commotion which sometimes arises in a
woman's mind when the romance of her life comes to a sudden pause and
silence follows the constant interchange of words and looks, and the
doubt whether anything more will ever follow, or whether the pause is to
be for ever, turns all the sweeter meditations into a whirl of confusion
and anxiety and shame. A mother is so near that the reflection of her
child's sentiments gets into her mind, but very often with such prismatic
changes, and oblique catchings of the light, that even sympathy goes
wrong. Mrs. Warrender thus caught from Chatty the representation of an
agitated soul in which there was all the sensitive shame of a love
that is given unsought, mingled with a tender indignation against the
offender who perhaps had never meant--But the mother on this point took
a different view, and there rose up in her mind on the moment, a hundred
cheerful, hopeful plans to bring him back and to set all right. Naturally
there was not a word said on the subject, which was far too delicate for
words; but this was how Mrs. Warrender followed, as she believed, with
an intensity which was full of tenderness, the current of her daughter's
thoughts.

And yet these were not Chatty's thoughts at all. If she felt any
excitement it was against those plans for cheering her, and the idea
that any little contrivances of society could ever take the place of
what was past--conjoined with a sort of jealousy of that past, lest any
one should interfere with it, or attempt to blur the perfect outline of
it as a thing which had been, and could be no more, nor any copy of
it. This was what the soul most near her own did not divine. They sat
together in the silence of the summer parlour, the cool sweet room full
of flowers, with the July sun shut out, but the warm air coming in, so
full of mutual love and sympathy, and yet with but so disturbed and
confused an apprehension each of each. After some time had passed thus,
without any disturbance, nothing but the softened sounds of morning
traffic in the quiet street, a slow cart passing, an occasional carriage,
the voices of the children just freed from school, there came the quick
sound of a horse's hoofs, a pause before the door, and then the bell
echoing into the silence of the house.

"That must be Theo," cried Mrs. Warrender. "I was sure he would come
to-day. Chatty, after luncheon, will you leave us a little, my dear? Not
that we have any secrets from you: but he will speak more freely, if he
is alone with me."

"I should have known that, mamma, without being told."

"Dear Chatty, you must not be displeased. You know many things more than
I had ever thought."

"Displeased, mamma!"

"Hush, Chatty, here is my poor boy."

Her poor boy! the triumphant lover, the young man at the height of his
joy and pride. They both rose to meet him, eager, watching to take the
tone which should be most in harmony with his. But Mrs. Warrender had a
pity in her heart for Theo which she did not feel for Chatty--perhaps
because in her daughter's case her sympathy was more complete.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

Warrender met his mother and sister with a face somewhat cloudy, which,
however, he did his best to clear as he came in, in response to their
pleasure at the sight of him. It did not become him in his position to
look otherwise than blessed: but a man has less power of recognising
and adapting himself to this necessity than a woman. He did his best,
however, to take an interest in the house, to have all its conveniencies
pointed out to him, and the beauty of the view over the garden, and the
coolness of the drawing-room in which they sat. What pleased him still
more, however, or at least called forth a warmer response, was the
discovery of some inconveniencies which had already been remarked. "I am
very glad you told me," he said. "I must have everything put right for
you, mother. A thing that can be put right by bricks and mortar is so
easy a matter."

"It is the easiest way, perhaps, of setting things right," she said, not
without an anxious glance; "but even bricks and mortar are apt to lead
you further than you think. You remember Mr. Briggs, in _Punch_?"

"They will not lead me too far," said Theo. "I am all in the way of
renovation and restoration. You should see--or rather, you should not
see, for I am afraid you would be shocked--our own house----"

"What are you doing? No, I should not be shocked. I never was a devotee
of the Warren. I always thought there were a great many improvements I
could make."

"Oh, mamma!"

"You must remember, Chatty, I was not born to it, like you. What are you
doing? Are you building? Your letters are not very explicit, my dear."

"You shall see. I cannot describe. I have not the gift." Here the cloud
came again over Theo's face, the cloud which he had pushed back on his
entrance as if it had been a veil. "We have let in a little light at
all events," he said, "that will always be something to the good. Now,
mother, let me have some lunch; for I cannot stay above an hour or so.
I have to see Longstaffe. There has been a great deal to do."

"Mr. Longstaffe, I am sure, will not give you any trouble that he can
help."

"He is giving me a great deal of trouble," said the young man, with
lowering brows. Then he cleared up again with an effort. "You have not
told me anything about your doings in town."

"Oh, we did a great deal in town." Here Mrs. Warrender paused for a
moment, feeling that neither did the auditor care to hear, nor the
person concerned in those doings care to have them told. Between these
two, her words were arrested. Chatty's head was more than ever bent over
her muslin, and Theo had walked to the window, and was looking out with
the air of a man whose thoughts were miles away. No one said anything
more for a full minute, when he suddenly came back, so to speak, and
said, with a sort of smile:--

"So you were very gay?" as if in the meantime she had been pouring forth
an account of many gaieties into his ear. So far as Theo was concerned,
it was evidently quite unnecessary to say any more, but there was now
the other silent listener to think of, who desired that not a word should
be said, yet would be equally keen to note and put a meaning to the
absence of remark. Between the two, the part of Mrs. Warrender was a
hard one. She said, which, perhaps, was the last thing she ought to have
said: "We saw a great deal of your friend Mr. Cavendish."

"Ah, Dick! yes, he's about town I suppose--pretending to do law, and
doing society. Mother, if you want me to stay to luncheon----"

"I will go and see after it," said Chatty. She gave her mother a look,
as she put down her work. A look--what did it mean, a reproach for having
mentioned him? an entreaty to ask more about him? Mrs. Warrender could
not tell. When they were left alone, her son's restlessness increased.
He felt, it was evident, the dangers of being left with her _tete-a-tete_.

"I hope you didn't see too much of him," he said hastily, as if picking
up something to defend himself. "Cavendish is a fellow with a story, and
no one knows exactly what it is."

"I am sure he is honourable and good," said Mrs. Warrender, and then she
cried, "Theo! don't keep me in this suspense--there is something amiss."

He came at once, and sat down opposite to her, gazing at her across the
little table. "Yes," he said with defiance, "you have made up your mind
to that beforehand. I could see it in your eyes. What should be amiss?"

"Theo, you do me wrong. I had made up my mind to nothing beforehand--but
I am very anxious. I know there must be difficulties. What are your
negotiations with Mr. Longstaffe? Is it about settlements?--is it----"

"Longstaffe is an old fool, mother: that is about what it is."

"No, my dear. I am sure he is a kind friend, who has your interests at
heart."

"Whose interests?" he said, with a harsh laugh. "You must remember there
are two sides to the question. I should say that the interests of a
husband and wife were identical, but that is not the view taken by those
wretched little pettifogging country lawyers."

"Dear Theo, it is never, I believe, the view taken by the law. They have
to provide against the possibility of everything that is bad--they must
suppose that it is possible for every man to turn out a domestic
tyrant."

"Every man!" he said, with a smile of scorn: "do you think I should be
careful about that? They may bind me down as much as they please. I have
held out my hands to them ready for the fetters. What I do grudge," he
went on, as if, the floodgates once opened, the stream could not be
restrained, "is all that they are trying to impose upon her, giving her
the appearance of feelings entirely contrary to her nature--making her
out to be under the sway of---- That's what I can't tolerate. If I knew
her less, I might imagine--but thank God, I am sure on that point," he
added, with a sharpness in his voice which did not breathe conviction to
his mother's ear.

She laid her hand upon his arm, soothing him. "You must remember, that
in the circumstances a woman is not her own mistress. Oh, Theo, that was
always the difficulty I feared. You are so sensitive, so ready to start
aside like a restive horse, so intolerant of anything that seems less
than perfect."

"Am I so, mother?" He gathered her hand into his, and laid down his head
upon it, kissing it tremulously. "God bless you for saying so. My own
mother says it--a fastidious fool, always looking out for faults, putting
meanings to everything--starting at a touch, like a restive horse."

How it was that she understood him, and perceived that to put his faults
in the clearest light was the best thing she could do for him, it would
be hard to tell. She laid her other hand upon his bent head. "Yes, my
dear, yes, my dear! that was always your fault. If your taste was
offended, if anything jarred--though it might be no more than was
absolutely essential, no more than common necessity required."

"Mother, you do me more good than words can say. Yes, I know, I know--I
never have friends for that cause. I have always wanted more, more----"

"More than any one could give," she said softly. "Those whom you love
should be above humanity, Theo: their feet should not tread the ground
at all. I have always been afraid, not knowing how you would take it
when necessary commonplaces came in."

"I wonder," he said, raising his head, "whether mothers are always as
perfect comforters as you are. That was what I wanted: but nobody in the
world could have said it but you."

"Because," she said, carrying out her role unhesitatingly, though to
her own surprise and without knowing why, "only your mother could know
your faults, without there being the smallest possibility that any fault
could ever stand between you and me."

His eyes had the look of being strained and hot, yet there seemed a
little moisture in the corners, a moisture which corresponded with the
slight quiver in his lip, rather than with the light in his eyes. He
held her hand still in his and caressed it almost unconsciously. "I am
not like you in that," he said. Alas no! he was not like her in that:
though the accusation of being fastidious, fantastic, intolerant of the
usual conditions of humanity, was, for the moment, the happiest thing
that could be said to him, yet a fault! a fault would stand between him
and whosoever was guilty of it, mother even--love still more. A fault:
he was determined that she should be perfect, the woman whom he had
chosen. To keep her perfect he was glad to seize at that suggestion of
personal blame, to acknowledge that he himself was impatient of every
condition, intolerant even of the bonds of humanity. But if there ever
should arise the time when the goddess should be taken from her pedestal,
when the woman should be found fallible like all women, heaven preserve
poor Theo then. The thought went through Mrs. Warrender's mind like a
knife. What would become of him? He had given himself up so unreservedly
to his love, he had sacrificed his own fastidious temper in the first
place, had borne the remarks of the county, had supported Geoff, had
allowed himself to be laughed at and blamed. But now if he should chance
to discover that the woman for whom he had done all this was not in
herself a piece of perfection----His mother felt her very heart sink
at the thought. No one was perfect enough to satisfy Theo; no one was
perfect at all so far as her own experience went. And when he made this
terrible discovery, what would he do?

In the meantime they went to luncheon, and there was talk of the repairs
wanted in the house, and of what Theo was doing "at home." He was very
unwilling, however, to speak of "home," or of what he had begun to do
there. He told them indeed of the trees that had been cut down, over
which Chatty made many exclamations, mourning for them; but even Chatty
was not vigorous in her lamentations. They sat and talked, not interested
in anything they were saying, the mother seated between them, watching
each, herself scarcely able to keep up the thread of coherent conversation,
making now and then incursions on either side from which she was obliged
to retreat hurriedly; referring now to some London experience which
Chatty's extreme dignity and silence showed she did not want to be
mentioned, or to something on the other side from which Theo withdrew
with still more distinct reluctance to be put under discussion. It was
not till this uncomfortable meal was over that Theo made any further
communication about his own affairs. He was on his way to the door,
whither his mother had followed him, when he turned round as if
accidentally. "By the bye," he said, "I forgot to tell you. _She_ will
be here presently, mother. She wanted to lose no time in seeing you."

"Lady Markland!" said Mrs. Warrender, with a little start.

He fixed his eyes upon her severely. "Who else? She is coming about
three. I shall come back, and go home with her."

"Theo, before I meet your future wife---- You have never given me any
details. Oh, tell me what has happened and what is going to happen.
Don't leave me to meet her in ignorance of everything."

"What is it you want to know?" he said, with his sombre air, setting his
back against the wall. "You know all that I know."

"Which is no more than that she has accepted you, Theo."

"Well, what more would you have? That is how it stands now, and may for
months for anything I can tell."

"I should have thought it would have been better to get everything
settled quickly. Why should there be any delay?"

"Ah, why? You must ask that of Mr. Longstaffe," he said, and turned
away.

Mrs. Warrender was much fluttered by the announcement of this visit.
She had expected no doubt to meet Lady Markland very soon, to pay her
perhaps a solemn visit, to receive her so to speak as a member of the
family, which had been an alarming thought. For Lady Markland, though
always grateful to her, and on one or two occasions offering something
that looked like a close, confidential friendship, had been always a
great lady in the opinion of the squire's wife, a more important person
than herself, intimacy with whom would carry embarrassments with it.
She had not been even, like other people in her position, familiarly
known in the society of the county. Her seclusion during her husband's
lifetime, the almost hermit life she led, the pity she had called forth,
the position as of one apart from the world which she had maintained,
all united to place Lady Markland out of the common circle on a little
eminence of her own. She had been very cordial especially on the last
evening they had spent together, the summer night when she had come to
fetch Geoff. But still they had never been altogether at their ease
with Lady Markland. Mrs. Warrender went back into the drawing-room, and
looked round upon it with eyes more critical than when she had regarded
it in relation to herself, wondering if Lady Markland would think it a
homely place, a residence unworthy her future husband's mother. She made
some little changes in it instinctively, put away the work on which
she had been engaged, and looked at Chatty's little workbox with an
inclination to put that too out of the way. The rooms at Markland were
not so fine as to make such precautions necessary; yet there was a faded
splendour about them very different from the limitation and comfortable
prim neatness of this. When she had done all that it was possible to do,
she sat down to wait for her visitor, trying to read though she could
not give much attention to what she read. "Lady Markland is to be here
at three," she said to Chatty, who was slightly startled for a moment,
but much less than her mother, taking a strip of muslin out of her box,
and beginning to work at it as if this was the business of life and
nothing else could excite her more. The blinds were all drawn down for
the sunshine, and the light came in green and cool though everything was
blazing out-of-doors. These lowered blinds made it impossible to see
the arrival though Mrs. Warrender heard it acutely--every prance of the
horses, every word Lady Markland said. It seemed a long time before,
through the many passages of the old-fashioned house, the visitor
appeared. She made a slight pause on the threshold, apparently waiting
for an invitation, for a special reception. Mrs. Warrender, with her
heart beating, had risen, and stood with her hands clasped in tremulous
expectation. They looked at each other for a moment across the parlour
maid, who did not know how to get out of the room from between the two
ladies, neither of whom advanced towards the other. Then Mrs. Warrender
went hurriedly forward with extended hands.

"Theo told me you were coming. I am very glad to see you." They took
each other's hands, and Mrs. Warrender bent forward to give the kiss
of welcome. They were two equal powers, meeting on debatable ground,
fulfilling all the necessary courtesies. Not like this should Theo's
mother have met his wife. It should have been a young creature whom she
could have taken into her arms, who would have flung herself upon the
breast of his mother, or at her knees, like a child of her own. Instead
of this, they were two equal powers, if, indeed, Lady Markland were not
the principal, the one to give and not receive. Mrs. Warrender felt
herself almost younger, less imposing altogether than the new member
of the family, to whom it should have been her part to extend a tender
patronage, to draw close to her, and set at her ease. Things were better
when this difficult first moment was over. It was suitable and natural
that Lady Markland should give to Chatty that kiss of peace--and then
they all seated themselves in a little circle. "You have just arrived,"
Lady Markland said.

"Yesterday. We have scarcely settled down."

"And you enjoyed your stay in town? Chatty at least --Chatty must have
enjoyed it." Lady Markland turned to her with a soft smile.

"Oh yes, very much," said Chatty, almost under her breath.

And then there was a brief pause, after which, "I hope Geoff is quite
well," Mrs. Warrender said.

"Quite well, and I was to bring you his love." Lady Markland hesitated
a little, and said, "I should like if I might--to consult you about
Geoff."

"Surely," Mrs. Warrender replied, and again there was a pause.

In former times, Chatty would not have perceived the embarrassment of
her two companions: but she had learned to divine since her three weeks'
experience. She rose up quietly. "I think, mamma, you will be able to
talk better if I go away."

"I don't know, my dear," said Mrs. Warrender, with a slight tremulousness.
Lady Markland did not say anything. She retained the advantage of
the position, not denying that she wished it, and Chatty accordingly,
putting down her work, went away. Mrs. Warrender felt the solemnity of
the interview more and more; but she did not know what to say.

Presently Lady Markland took the initiative. She rose and approached
nearer to Mrs. Warrender's side. "I want you to tell me," she said,
herself growing for the first time a little tremulous, "if you dislike
this very much--for Theo."

"Dislike it! oh, how can you think so? His happiness is all I desire,
and if you----"

"If I can make him happy? that is a dreadful question, Mrs. Warrender.
How can any one tell that? I hope so; but if I should deceive
myself----"

"That was not what I meant: there is no happiness for him, but that
which you can give: if you think him good enough--that was what I was
going to say."

"Good enough! Theo? Oh then, you do not know what he is, though he is
your son; and so far I am better than you are."

"Lady Markland, you are better in a great many ways. It is this that
frightens me. In some things you are so much above any pretensions of
his. He has so little experience, he is not rich, nor even is he clever
(though he is very clever) according to the ways of the world. I seem to
be disparaging my boy. It is not that, Lady Markland."

"No; do you think I don't understand? I am too old for him; I am not the
kind of woman you would have chosen, or even that he would have chosen,
had he been in his right senses."

"It is folly to say that you are old. You are not old; you are a woman
that any man might be proud to love. And his love--has been a wonder to
me to see," said his mother, her voice faltering, her eyes filling. "I
have never known such adoration as that."

"Ah, has it not!" cried the woman who was the object of it, a sudden
melting and ineffable change coming over her face. "That was what gave
me the courage," she said, after a moment's pause. "How could I refuse?
It is not often, is it, that a man--that a woman"--here her voice died
away in a confusion and agitation which melted all Mrs. Warrender's
reluctance. She found herself with her arms round the great lady,
comforting her, holding her head against her own breast. They shed some
tears together, and kissed each other, and for a moment came so close
that all secondary matters that could divide them seemed to fade away.

"But now," said Lady Markland, after this little interval, "he is
worried and disturbed again, by all the lawyers think it right to do. I
should like to spare him all that, but I am helpless in their hands. Oh,
dear Mrs. Warrender, you will understand. There are so many things that
make it more difficult. There is--Geoff."

Mrs. Warrender pressed her hands and gave her a look full of sympathy;
but she said nothing. She did not make a cheerful protest that all these
things were without importance, and that Geoff was no drawback, as
perhaps it was hoped she might do. Lady Markland drew back a little,
discouraged--waiting for some word of cheer which did not come.

"You know," she said, her voice trembling, "what my boy has been to me:
everything! until this new light that I never dreamed of, that I never
had hoped for, or thought of. You know how we lived together, he and I.
He was my companion, more than a child, sharing every thought. You
know----"

"Lady Markland, you have had a great deal of trouble, but how much with
it--a child like that, and then----"

"And then--Theo! Was there ever a woman so blessed--or so---- Oh, help
me to know what I am to do between them! You can understand better than
any of the young ones. Don't you see," said Lady Markland, with a smile
in which there was a kind of despair, "that though I am not old, as you
say, I am on your level rather than on his, that _you_ can understand
better than he?"

If it were possible that a woman who is a mother could cease to be that
in the first place and become a friend, first of all a sympathiser in the
very difficulties that overwhelm her son, that miracle was accomplished
then. The woman whom she had with difficulty accepted as Theo's future
wife became, for a moment, nearer to her in this flood of sympathy
than Theo himself. The woman's pangs and hindrances were closer to
her experience than the man's. To him, in the heat of his young
passion, nothing was worth considering that interfered with the perfect
accomplishment of his love. But to her--the young woman, who had to
piece on the present to the past, who though she might have abandoned
father and mother could never abandon her child--the other woman's heart
went out with a pang of fellow-feeling. Mrs. Warrender, like most women,
had an instinctive repugnance to the idea of a second marriage at all,
but that being determined and beyond the reach of change, her heart
ached for the dilemma which was more painful than any which enters into
the possibilities of younger life. As Lady Markland leant towards her,
claiming her sympathy, her face full of sentiments so conflicting, the
joy of love and yet the anguish of it, and all the contrariety of a
heart torn in two, the youthfulness, when all was said, of this expressive
countenance, the recollection that, after all, this woman who claimed to
be on her own level was not too old to be her child, seized upon Mrs.
Warrender. Nothing that is direct and simple can be so poignant as those
complications in which right and wrong and all the duties of human life
are so confused that no sharply cut division is possible. What was she
to do? She would owe all her heart to her husband, and what was to
remain for her child? Geoff had upon her the first claim of nature; her
love, her care, were his right--but then Theo? The old mother took the
young one into her arms, with an ache of sympathy. "Oh, my dear, what
can I say to you? We must leave it to Providence. Things come round when
we do not think too much of them, but do our best."

How poor a panacea, how slight a support! and yet in how many cases all
that one human creature can say to another! To do our best and to think
as little as possible, and things will come round! The absolute mind
scorns the mild consolation. To Theo it would have been an irritation,
a wrong, but Theo's betrothed received it with humbler consciousness.
The sympathy calmed her, and that so moderate, so humble, voucher of
experience that things come round. Was it really so? was nothing so bad
as it appeared? was it true that the way opened before you little by
little in treading it, as she who had gone on so much farther on the
path went on to say? Lady Markland regained her composure as she
listened.

"You are speaking to me like a true mother," she said. "I have never
known what that was. Help me, only help me! even to know that you
understand me is so much--and do not blame me."

"Dear Lady Markland----"

"I have a name," she said, with a smile which was full of pain, as if
marking another subject of trouble, "which is my own, which cannot be
made any question of. Will you call me Frances? It would please him.
They say it would be unusual, unreasonable, a thing which is never
done--to give up---- Is that Theo? Dear Mrs. Warrender, I shall be far
happier, now that I know I have a friend in you."

She grasped his mother's hands with a hurried gesture, and an anxious,
imploring look. Then gave a hasty glance into the glass, and recovered
in a moment her air of gentle dignity, her smile. It was this that met
Theo when he came in eager, yet doubtful, his eyes finding her out, with
a rapid question, the instant that he entered. Whatever her troubles
might be, none of them were made apparent to him.

CHAPTER XXXV.

Next day Mr. Longstaffe called upon Mrs. Warrender, nominally about the
alterations that had to be made in her house, but really with objects
much more important. He made notes scrupulously of what she wanted,
and hoped that she would not allow anything to be neglected that was
necessary for her comfort. When these necessary preliminaries were over,
there was a pause. He remained silent with an expectant air, waiting to
be questioned, and though she had resolved if possible to refrain from
doing so, the restriction was more than her faculties could bear.

"My son tells me," she said, as indifferently as possible, "that there
is a great deal going on between him and you."

"Naturally," cried Mr. Longstaffe, with a certain heat of indignation.
"He is making a marriage which is not at all a common kind of marriage,
and yet he would have liked it to be without any settlements at all."

"He could not wish anything that was not satisfactory to Lady Markland."

"Do you think so? then I must undeceive you. He would have liked Lady
Markland to give herself to him absolutely with no precautions, no
restrictions."

"Mr. Longstaffe, Theo is very much in love. He has always been very
sensitive: he cannot bear (I suppose) mixing up business matters, which
he hates, with----"

"It is all very well for him to hate business, though between you and
me, if you will allow me to say so, I think it very silly. Ladies may
entertain such sentiments, but a man ought to know better. If you will
believe me, he wants to marry her as if she were sixteen and had not a
penny! To make her Mrs. Theodore Warrender and take her home to his own
house!"

"What should he do else? is not that the natural thing that every man
wishes to do?"

"Yes, if he marries a girl of sixteen without a penny, as I said. Mrs.
Warrender, I know you are full of sense. Perhaps you will be able to
put it before him in a better light. When a man marries a lady, with an
established position of her own like Lady Markland, and a great many
responsibilities, especially when she is a sort of queen mother and has
a whole noble family to be accountable to----"

"I do not wonder that Theo should be impatient, Mr. Longstaffe; all this
must be terrible to him, in the midst of his---- Why should not they
marry first, and then these things will arrange themselves?"

"Marry first! and leave her altogether unsecured."

"I hope you know that my son is a man of honour, Mr. Longstaffe."

"My dear madam, we have nothing to do with men of honour in the law. I
felt sure that you would understand at least. Suppose we had left Miss
Minnie dependent upon the honour (though I don't doubt it at all) of the
Thynne family."

"I don't mean in respect to money," said Mrs. Warrender, with a slight
flush. "He will not interfere with her money, of that I am certain."

"No: only with herself; and she has been left the control of everything;
and she must be free to administer her son's property and look after his
interests. If you will allow me to say it, Mrs. Warrender, Lady Markland
is a much better man of business than Theo."

Mr. Longstaffe had known Theo all his life, and had never addressed him
otherwise than by that name, but it seemed an over-familiarity, a want
of respect, even a sign of contempt in the position in which Theo now
stood. She replied with a little offence:--

"That is very possible. He has had little experience, and he is a scholar,
not a person of business. But why should the marriage be delayed? This
is the worst moment for them both. I know my son, Mr. Longstaffe. All
this frets him beyond description now; but when the uncertainty is over,
and all these negotiations, everything will come round. He will never
interfere or prevent her from doing what is necessary for her son. When
they are once married all will go well."

This was a long speech for Mrs. Warrender, and she made it with
interruptions, with trepidation, not quite so sure perhaps of her own
argument as she had thought she was. The lawyer looked at her with a
kind of respectful contempt.

"There may be a certain justice in what you say, that this is the worst
moment: but I for one could never agree to anything so unbusiness-like
as you seem to suggest. Marriage first, and business afterwards--no,
no--and then there is the little boy. You would not have him sent off to
nurse while his mother goes upon her honeymoon. Poor little fellow, so
devoted as she was to him before!"

"A second marriage," said Mrs. Warrender, subdued, "can never be so
simple, so easy, as one in which there are no complications."

"They are better, if they so abide," said Mr. Longstaffe. "I agree with
St. Paul for my part. But it would be hard upon a young woman, poor thing,
that made such a failure in her first. If Theo were not so restive, if
you could get him to take things a little more easy---- Dear me, of
course I trust in his honour; no one doubts that. But he will lead her a
pretty dance; whether it will be better for her to have a good crotchety
high-tempered young fellow who adores her, or a rough young scamp who
neglected her----"

"There can be no comparison between the two."

"No," said Mr. Longstaffe ruefully, but perhaps his judgment did not
lean to Theo's side.

"And why should not they live at the Warren?" she asked. "It is not a
fine house, but it is a good house, and with the improvements Theo is
making----"

"My dear lady, to me the Warren is a delightful little place, or at
least it could be made delightful. But Markland--Markland is a very
different matter. To change the one for the other would be--well it
would be, you won't deny, something like a sacrifice. And why should
she? when Markland is all ready, wanting no alteration, an excellent
house, and in the middle of the property which she has to manage,
whereas the Warren----"

"I have lived in the Warren all my life," said Mrs. Warrender, with a
little natural indignation. It wounded her sore that he should talk of
it patronisingly as "a delightful little place." She was not in any
way devoted to the Warren; still this patronage, this unfavourable
comparison irritated her, and she began to range herself with more
warmth upon her own side. "I can see no reason why my son's wife should
not live there."

"But there are reasons why Lady Markland should not live there."

Mrs. Warrender's eyes shot forth fire. She no longer wondered that Theo
was driven to the verge of distraction. Oh that he had loved some young
creature on his own level, some girl who would have gone sweetly to his
home with him and glorified the old life! His mother had wept over and
soothed the woman of his choice only yesterday, entering into all the
difficulties that beset her path, and pledging her own assistance to
overcome them; but now she was all in arms in behalf of her boy, whose
individuality was to be crushed among them, who was to be made into an
appendage to Lady Markland, and have no place of his own. Instead of
giving her assistance to tame Theo, she felt herself take fire in his
defence.

"You are very right, no doubt, to consider Lady Markland in the first
place," she said, "but I don't think we can argue the question further,
for to me my son must be the first."

"It is the right way," said the lawyer, "but when a young man lifts his
eyes----"

"We will say no more on the subject," she said quickly. And Mr.
Longstaffe was too judicious to do anything else than resume the
question about the garden palings, and then to bow himself out. He
turned, indeed, at the door to express his regrets that he had not
brought her to his way of thinking, that he lost her valuable help, upon
which he had calculated: but this did not conciliate Mrs. Warrender. She
had no carriage at her orders, or she would have gone to the Warren at
once, with the impulsiveness of her nature, to see what Theo was doing,
what he was thinking of. But Theo was at Markland, alternating between
the Paradiso and the Inferno, between the sweetness of his betrothed's
company and all the hard conditions of his happiness, and the Warren was
in the hands of a set of leisurely country tradespeople, who if Theo had
meant to carry his bride there must have postponed that happiness for a
year or two--not much wonder, perhaps, since they were left by the young
master to dawdle on their own way.

Mrs. Warrender, however, had another and a surprising visitor on this
same day. The ladies were sitting together in their usual way, in the
heat of the afternoon, waiting until it should be cool enough for their
walk, when the parlour maid, not used, perhaps, to such visitors, opened
the door with a little excitement, and announced, "Lord Markland." Mrs.
Warrender rose quickly to her feet, with a low cry, and a sudden wild
imagination such as will dart across a troubled mind. Lord Markland! had
he never died then, was it all a dream, had he come back to stop it in
time? A small voice interrupted this flash of thought, and brought her
back to herself with a giddy sense of the ridiculous and a sensation of
shame quite out of proportion to the momentary illusion. "It is only me,
Geoff: but I thought when she asked me my name, I was obliged to give my
right name." He seemed smaller than ever, as he came across the room
twitching his face as his habit was, and paler, or rather grayer, with
scanty locks and little twinkling eyes. "Did you think it was some one
else?" he said.

"Of course it could be no one but you. I was startled for the moment,
not thinking of you by that title. And have you come all this way
alone--without any----"

"Oh, you were thinking of that other time. There is a great deal of
difference since that other time. It is nearly a year since--and now I
do a great many things by myself," said the boy, looking at her keenly.
"I am let to go wherever I please."

"Because you are now old enough to take care of yourself," said Mrs.
Warrender, "with the help of Black."

"Yes," said Geoff, "how did you know? I have got Black. But there is
more in it than that. Would mamma have ruined me, if she had kept on
always coddling me, Mrs. Warrender? that is what the servants say."

"My dear, one never allows the servants to say things of that kind. You
should understand your mother's meaning much better than they can do."

"I see a great deal of the servants now," said Geoff--then he corrected
himself with a look of sudden recollection--"that is, I am afraid I
disobey mamma, Mrs. Warrender. I am rather fond of the servants, they
are more amusing than other people. I go to the stables often when I
know I oughtn't. To know you oughtn't, and yet to do it, is very bad,
don't you think?"

"I am afraid it is, Geoff. Don't you have any lessons now?"

"They say this is holiday time," said the boy. "Of course I am glad of
the holidays, but it is a little stupid too, not having any one to play
with--but I may come out a great deal more than I used to. And that is
a great advantage, isn't it? I read too, chiefly stories; but a whole
day is a very long time, don't you think so? I did not say where I was
coming this afternoon, in case the pony might get tired, or Black turn
cross, or something, but it appears Black likes to come to Highcombe, he
has friends here." The boy had come close to Mrs. Warrender's work-table,
and was lifting up and putting down again the reels of silk, the thimbles
and scissors. He went on with his occupation for some time very gravely,
his back turned to the light. At length he said, "I want you to tell me
one thing. They say Warrender is coming to live at our house."

"I am afraid it is true, Geoff."

"Don't you like it, then?" said the boy. "I thought if you did not like
it you would not let it be."

"My dear, my son Theo is a man. I cannot tell him what he must do as
your mother does to you. And if I do not like it, it is because he has a
good house of his own."

"Ah, the Warren!" said Geoff: then he added, pulling all the reels about
in the work-table, and without raising his eyes to her face, "If he is
coming, I wish he would come, Mrs. Warrender, then perhaps I should go
to school. Don't you think school is a good thing for a boy?"

"Everybody says so, Geoff."

"Yes, I know--it is in all the books. Mrs. Warrender, if--Warrender is
coming to live with us, will you be a sort of grandmother to me?"

This startled her very much. She looked at the odd child with a
sensation almost of alarm.

"Because," he continued, "I never had one, and I could come and talk to
you when things were bad."

"I hope you will never have any experience of things being bad, Geoff."

He gave a glance at her face, his hands still busy among the threads and
needles.

"Oh no, never, perhaps--but, Mrs. Warrender, if--Warrender is coming to
Markland to live, _I_ wish he would do it now, directly. Then it would
be settled what was going to be done with me--and--and other things."
Geoff's face twitched more than ever, and she understood that the reason
why he did not look at her was because his little eyelids were swollen
with involuntary tears. "There are a lot of things--that perhaps would
get--settled then," he said.

"Geoff," she said, putting her arm round him, "I am afraid you don't
like it any more than I do, my poor boy."

Geoff would not yield to the demoralising influence of this caress. He
held himself away from her, swaying backwards, resisting the pressure
of her arm. His eyelids grew bigger and bigger, his mouth twitched and
quivered. "Oh, it is not that," he said, with a quiver in his voice, "if
mamma likes it. I am only little, I am rather backward, I am
not--company enough for mamma."

"That must be one of the things that the servants say. You must not
listen, Geoff, to what the servants say."

"But it is quite true. Mamma knows just exactly what is best. I used to
be the one that was always with her--and now it is Warrender. He can
talk of lots of things--things I don't understand. For I tell you I am
very backward, I don't know half, nor so much as half, what some boys do
at my age."

"That is a pity, perhaps; but it does not matter, Geoff, to your--to the
people who are fond of you, my dear."

"Oh yes, it does," cried the boy; "don't hold me, please! I am a little
beast, I am not grateful to people nor anything! the best thing for me
will just be to be sent to school." Here Geoff turned his back upon her
abruptly, forced thereto by the necessity of getting rid of those tears.
When he had thus relieved himself, and cleared his throat of the climbing
sorrow that threatened to shake his voice, he came back and stood once
more by her table. The great effort of swallowing down all that emotion
had made him pale, and left the strained look which the passage of a
sudden storm leaves both upon the human countenance and the sky. "They
say it's very jolly at Eton," he resumed suddenly, taking up with his
hot little nervous fingers Mrs. Warrender's piece of work.

But at this point Geoff's confidences were interrupted by the entrance
of visitors, who not only meant to make themselves agreeable to Mrs.
Warrender on her first arrival at Highcombe, but who were very eager to
find out all that they could about the marriage of Theo, if it really
was going to take place, and when, and everything about it. It added
immensely to the excitement, but little to the information acquired,
when in answer to the first question Mrs. Warrender indicated to her
visitors that the little boy standing at her side, and contemplating
them with his hands in his pockets, was little Lord Markland. "Oh, the
boy," they said under their breath, and stopped their questioning most
unwillingly, all but the elder lady, who got Mrs. Warrender into a
corner, and carried on the interrogatory. Was she quite pleased? but of
course she was pleased. The difference of age was so little that it did
not matter, and though the Markland family were known not to be rich,
yet to be sure it was a very nice position. And such a fine character,
not a woman that was very popular, but quite above criticism. "There
never was a whisper against her--oh, never a whisper! and that is a
great thing to say." Geoff did not hear, and probably would not have
understood, these comments. He still stood by the work-table, taking the
reels of silk out of their places and putting them back again with the
gravity of a man who has something very important in hand. He seemed
altogether absorbed in this simple occupation, bending over it with
eyebrows contracted over his eyes, and every sign of earnestness. "What a
curious thing for a boy to take pleasure in: but I suppose being always
with his mother has rather spoiled him. It will be so good for the child
to have a man in the house," said the lady who was interviewing Mrs.
Warrender. There was a little group of the younger ladies round Chatty,
talking about the parish and the current amusements, and hoping that she
would join the archery club, and that she loved croquet. The conversation
was very animated on that side, one voice echoing another, although the
replies of Chatty were mild. Geoff had all the centre of the room to
himself, and stood there as on a stage, putting the reel of red silk
into the square which was intended for the blue, and arranging the
colours in squares and parallels. He was much absorbed in it, and yet
he did not know what he was doing. His little bosom swelled high with
thought, his heart was wrung with the poignancy of love rejected--of
loss and change. It was not that he was jealous; the sensations which he
experienced had little bitterness or anger in them. Presently he turned
round and said, "I think I shall go home, Mrs. Warrender," with a
disagreeable consciousness that everybody paused and looked at him, when
his small voice broke the murmur of the feminine conversation. But what
did that matter to Geoff? He had much to occupy him, too much to leave
him free to think how people looked, or what they said.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

Geoff's heart was full. He pondered all the way home, neglecting all
the blandishments of Black's conversation, who had visited a friend or
two in Highcombe, and was full of cheerfulness and very loquacious.
Geoff let him talk, but paid no attention. He himself had gone to Mrs.
Warrender, whom he liked, with the hope of disburdening from his little
bosom some of the perilous stuff which weighed upon his soul. He had