y
strange question to ask. When we get over all this,--that is, the shock,
and the change, and the awe of the going away,--what will it be then, to
all of us? We shall just settle down once more into our ordinary life,
as if nothing had happened. That is what will come of it. That is what
always comes of it. There is nothing but the common routine, which goes
on and on for ever."

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

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

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

CHAPTER VII

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

How strange it is to realise, after the first blow has fallen, that this
changed life is still the same! When it brings with it external changes,
family convulsions, the alteration of external circumstances, although
these secondary things increase the calamity, they give it also a
certain natural atmosphere; they are in painful harmony with it. But
when the shock, the dreadful business of the moment, is all over, when
the funeral has gone away from the doors and the dead has been buried,
and everything goes on as before, this commonplace renewal is, perhaps,
the most terrible of all to the visionary soul. Minnie and Chatty got
out their work,--the coloured work, which they had thought out of
place during the first week. They went in the afternoon for a walk,
and gathered fresh flowers, as they returned, for the vases in the
drawing-room. When evening came they asked Theo if he would not read to
them. It was not a novel they were reading; it was a biography, of a
semi-religious character, in which there were a great many edifying
letters. They would not, of course, have thought of reading a novel a