oes not
suit me. I must retire. Mrs Franklin, pray make an old man's excuses
to our host and hostess."

He was _gone_!

CHAPTER THREE.

THE SWOLLEN STREAM.

It is the morning after the juvenile party at "The Firs." A clear,
bright frost still: everything _outside_ the house fresh and vigorous:
half-a-dozen labourers' little children running to school with faces
like peonies; jumping, racing, sliding, puffing out clouds of steaming
breath as they shout out again and again for very excess of health and
spirits.

Everything _inside_ the house limp, languid, and lugubrious; the fires
are sulky and won't burn; the maids are sulkier still. Mr Rothwell
breakfasts alone, feeling warm in nothing but his temper: the grate
sends forth little white jets of smoke from a wall of black coal,
instead of presenting a cheery surface of glowing heat: the toast is
black at the corners and white in the middle: the eggs look so truly new
laid that they seem to have come at once from the henhouse to the table,
without passing through the saucepan: the coffee is feeble and the milk
smoked: the news in the daily papers is flat, and the state of affairs
in country and county peculiarly depressing. Upstairs, Mrs Rothwell
tosses about with a sick headache, unable to rest and unwilling to rise.
The young ladies are dawdling in dressing-gowns over a bedroom
breakfast, and exchanging mutual sarcasms and recriminations, blended
with gall and bitterness flung back on last night's party. Poor Mark
has the worst of it, nausea and splitting headache, with a shameful
sense of having made both a fool and a beast of himself. So much for
the delights of "lots of negus, wine, and punch!" He has also a
humbling remembrance of having been rude to Mr Tankardew. A knock at
his door. "Come in."

"Please, sir, there's a hamper come for you," says the butler; "shall I
bring it in?"

"Yes, if you like."

The hamper is brought in and opened; it is only a small one. In the
midst of a deep bed of straw lies a hard substance; it is taken out and
the paper wrapped round it unfolded; only a glass tumbler! There is a
paper in it on which is written, "To Mr Mark Rothwell, from Mr Esau
Tankardew, to replace what he broke last night: keep it empty, my boy;
keep it empty."

Nine o'clock at "The Shrubbery." Mary and her mother are seated at
breakfast, both a little dull and disinclined to speak. At last Mary
breaks the silence by a profound sigh.