ostess with a fierce
amusement. He had to make some sort of poor jest, he did not know what,
to account for the laugh which tore him asunder, which he could not keep
in. What the joke was he did not know, but it had an unmerited success,
and the carriage rattled along past the garden wall in a perfect riot of
laughter from the fine lungs of the rector and Flo and Georgie and all
the little ones. If any one had but known! The tragedy was horrible, but
the laughter was fresh and innocent on all lips but his own. Coming back
he laughed no more. The gates were being opened; a sound of horses' hoofs
and the jingle of their furniture was audible. The inhabitants were
about to drive out. "If you look back you may catch a glimpse of--those
people," the rector whispered. But Dick did not look back. The danger
made him pale. Had they met face to face, what would have happened?
Could he have sat there safe among the innocent children, and made no
sign? But when the evening came, and it was time for the dinner at the
Warren, he had regained his composure, which, so far as his companions
were aware, had never been lost.

In the Warren there were strong emotions, perhaps passions, which he
did not understand, but which gave him a sort of fellow-feeling more
sympathetic than the well-being of the rector and his wife. Nothing is
more pleasant to see than the calm happiness of a wedded pair, who suit
each other, who have passed the youthful period of commotion, and have
not reached that which so often comes when the children in their turn
tempt the angry billows. But there is something in that self-satisfied
and self-concentrated happiness which jars upon those who in the turmoil
of existence have not much prospect of anything so peaceful. And then
domestic comfort is often so sure that nothing but its own virtue could
have purchased such an exemption from the ills of life. The Warren had
been a few months ago a pattern of humdrum peacefulness. The impatience
that sometimes lit up a little fire in Mrs. Warrender's eyes was so out
of character, so improbable, that any one who suspected it believed
himself to have been deceived; for who could suppose the mother to be
tired of her quiet existence? And the girls were not impatient; they
lived their half-vegetable life with the serenest and most complacent
calm. Now, however, new emotions were at work. The young master of the
house was full of abstraction and dreams, wrapped in some pursuit,