ohn with me, mother."

"Then it is over!" Mrs. Dennistoun cried.

And at that moment Pippo, very late, pale, and with eyes which were red
with sleeplessness, and perhaps with tears, came in. Elinor gave her
mother a quick look, almost of blame, and then turned to the boy. She
did not mean it, and yet Mrs. Dennistoun felt as if the suggestion, "He
might never have known had you not called out like that," was in her
daughter's eyes.

"Pippo!" she said. "Why, Elinor! what have you been doing to the boy?"

"He does not look well," said Elinor, suddenly waking up to that anxiety
which had been always so easily roused in respect to Pippo. "He was very
late last night. He was at the House with John," she added, involuntarily,
with an apology to her mother for the neglect which had extended to
Pippo too.

"There is nothing the matter with me," he said, with a touch of
sullenness in his tone.

The two women looked at each other with all the vague trouble in their
eyes suddenly concentrated upon young Philip, but they said nothing
more, as he sat down at table and began to play with the breakfast, for
which he had evidently no appetite. No one had ever seen that sullen
look in Pippo's face before. He bent his head over the table as if he
were intent upon the food which choked him when he tried to eat, and
which he loathed the very sight of--and did not say a word. They had
certainly not been very light-hearted before, but the sight of the boy
thus obscured and changed made all the misery more evident. There was
always a possibility of over-riding the storm so long as all was well
with Pippo: but his changed countenance veiled the very sun in the
skies.

"You don't seem surprised to see me here," his grandmother said.

"Oh!--no, I am not surprised. I wonder you did not come sooner. Have you
been travelling all night?" he said.

"Just as you did, Pippo. I drove into Penrith last night and caught the
mail train. I was seized with a panic about you, and felt that I must
see for myself."

"It is not the first time you have taken a panic about us, mother," said
Elinor, forcing a smile.

"No; but it is almost the first time I have acted upon it," said Mrs.
Dennistoun, with that faint instinct of self-defence; "but I think you
must have needed me more than usual to keep you in order. You must have
been going out too much, keeping late hours. You are pale enough,
Elinor, but Pippo--Pippo has suffered still more."

"I tell