pursuits, or knowledge of them, or
desire to know,--a dull affection because the boy belonged to him, and
satisfaction in that he had never got into any scrapes or given any
trouble. And the return which the son made was in the same kind. Theo
had felt the natural pang of disruption very warmly at the moment; he
had felt a great awe and wonder at sight of the mystery of that pale
and solemn thing which had lately been so unmysterious and unsolemn. But
even these pangs of natural sensation had fallen into a little ache and
weariness of custom, and his fastidious soul grew tired of the bonds
that kept him, or would have kept him, precisely at the same point of
feeling for so many hours and days. This is not possible for any one,
above all for a being of his temper, and he was restless beyond measure,
and eager to get over this enforced pause, and emerge into the common
life and daylight beyond. The drawn blinds somehow created a stifling
atmosphere in his very soul.

Mrs. Warrender felt it was indecorous to begin to speak of plans and
what was to be done afterwards, so long as her dead husband was still
master of the oppressed and melancholy house; but her mind, as may be
supposed, was occupied by them in the intervals of other thoughts. She
was not of the Warrender breed, but a woman of lively feelings; and as
soon as the partner of her life was out of her reach she had begun to
torment herself with fears that she had not been so good to him as she
ought. There was no truth, at least no fact, in this, for there could
have been no better wife or more careful nurse. But yet, as every
individual knows more of his or her self than all the rest of the world
knows, Mrs. Warrender was aware that there were many things lacking in
her conjugal devotion. She had not been the wife she knew how to be; in
her heart she had never given herself credit for fulfilling her duty. Oh
yes, she had fulfilled all her duties. She had been everything to him
that he wanted, that he expected, that he was capable of understanding.
But she knew very well that when all is said, that is not everything
that can be said; and now that he was dead, and could no longer look
in her face with lack-lustre eyes, wondering what the deuce the woman
meant, she threw herself back upon her own standard, and knew that she
had not come up to it. Even now she could not come up to it. Her heart
ought to be desolate; life ought to hold nothing for her but perhaps
resig