of late, as often as the
horses could be spared. The house in Highcombe, which was her own, which
she was to live in with the girls if Theo married or anything happened,
was being put in order, and that too was a gentle interest. Fortunately,
upon this afternoon Minnie was occupied in the parish. It was her "day,"
and nothing in heaven or earth was ever permitted to interfere with
Minnie's "day." The other two were pleased to be alone together, though
they never said so, but kept up even between themselves the little fiction
of saying, What a pity Minnie could not come! Chatty sympathised with
her mother more than Minnie had ever done, and was very glad in her
heart to ask a question or two about what was happening and what Theo
could mean, to which Mrs. Warrender answered with much greater ease and
fulness than if her elder daughter had been present to give her opinion.
Chatty asked with bated breath whether there was not something wicked
and terrible in the thought that Lady Markland, a woman who was married,
and who had been consoled in her affliction by the clergyman and all her
friends reminding her that her husband was not lost but gone before, and
that she would meet him again,--that she should be loved and wooed by
another man. Chatty grew red with shame as she asked the question. It
seemed to her an insult to any woman. "As if our ties were for this
world only!" she said. Mrs. Warrender in her reply waived the theological
question altogether, and shook her head, and declared that it was not
the thought that Lady Markland was a widow or that she was Theo's senior
which troubled her. "But she will never think of him," said the mother.
"Oh, Chatty, my heart is sore for my poor boy. He is throwing away his
love and the best of his life. She will never think of him. She is full
of her own affairs and of her child. She will take all that Theo gives
her, and never make him any return."

"Then, mamma, would you wish----" cried Chatty, astonished.

"I wish anything that would make him happy," her mother said. "It is a
great thing to be happy." She said this more to herself than to her
daughter; and to be sure, to a young person, it was a most unguarded
admission for a woman to make.

"Does being happy always mean----?" Here Chatty paused, with the sudden
flame of a blush almost scorching her cheeks. She had turned her head in
the opposite direction, as if looking at something among the trees; and
this was perhaps why