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

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

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

"What do you call home?" he asked.

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

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

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

"You mean--that this is not our home any more," said Minnie. Her eyes